A Vagrant Gypsy Life
by Bain Sidhe
Summary: After being drummed out of the Navy in disgrace, James Norrington is a dissolute drunkard living on Tortuga. But when he is given an opportunity to set sail once more, James finds himself embroiled in an adventure that will reunite him with old acquaintances and introduce him to new friends and foes alike, and he will discover that not everything - or everyone - is what it seems.
1. Down and Out in Tortuga

**Author's Note: So I realize I'm a bit late to the party, but I just watched the Pirates movies for the first time recently (I know, I know, insert comment about living under a rock, etc). I became immediately enamored of the character of James Norrington, and began to wonder what his life might have been like if his exile on Tortuga had continued. And thus this story was born. It takes place some three years after the events in Curse of the Black Pearl, and though I may reference, adopt, or alter events from Dead Man's Chest and At World's End here and there, the story should be considered AU after CotBP. One final note: this story is rated M for a reason, and thus contains very strong language (plenty o' salty sailor swearin'), sex and sexual themes, and some violence. Ye be fair warned! All right, enough chattering from me; our tale awaits!  
**

* * *

James Norrington awoke with a muffled groan, his head pounding in time to a staccato tattoo of pain, to find himself ensconced face down in the tits of a rather buxom whore.

Lifting his head produced a rather intense stab of discomfort, and so, abandoning the effort, he rolled sideways onto his back, and the sudden and unwelcome invasion of bright morning sun shining through the window elicited another drawn-out groan. Rubbing a shaky hand across his face in a futile effort to dull the ache, he squinted his eyes against the light and reached out with his other hand for the bottle that sat on the bedside table, the bottle that contained the cure for his ills and the only surefire remedy for the ungodly riot of agony that marched through his skull. Wrapping a fist around the bottle's neck, he pulled it gratefully to his mouth and took a long pull, the last dregs of the rum washing down his throat with a familiar and much-welcomed fire. As the last of the rum disappeared down his throat, he tossed the bottle carelessly across the room, where it landed with a loud clatter against the far wall.

The clash of the bottle hitting the wall was sufficient to awaken his companion, and the whore – what was her name again? Molly? Maggie? – stirred groggily, lifting her head from the pillow and unfurling in a cat-like stretch, providing him with a rather lovely view of those magnificent tits. She seemed to notice him then, and gave him a lascivious smile as she rolled out of bed.

"Morning, handsome," she purred. "Had us a full night, didn't we? Got your coin's worth I hope." She began to pull on her skirts, but he reached out with a hand to stay her arm, ignoring the acute throb that laced through his head at any sudden movement.

"Wait," he said, his tongue feeling thick and dry in his mouth. "No need to run off so soon, is there? Maybe we could have a proper morning greeting." Despite the deleterious effects of last night's overindulgence, he still felt the stiff ache between his legs that so often greeted him first thing in the morning, and it seemed such a shame not to enjoy the comforts of a comely lass in his bed once more before the day began.

"A morning greeting?" she laughed. "You mean for free? Sorry, love, I don't be handing out favours for free."

"Free?" he frowned. "I gave you coin last night."

"Aye, last night! And so you got what you paid for last night, didn't you? You didn't pay me nothing for today."

"Today?" He sat upright in the bed now, giving his head a small shake to clear out the cobwebs that seemed to have draped themselves around his mind. "Well, it's just now the morning. After last night." He cursed himself, the obviousness of his words sounding stupid even to his inebriated ears. "What I'm saying is that really, this could all be considered part of the same..." He paused, his mind blanking, while he groped for the word he wanted – the damnable light, and the pounding in his head, and everything all together seeming to keep him just on the outside edge of lucidity.

"The same business transaction," he said triumphantly as his brain alighted upon the words he'd sought.

"Business transaction? Ain't you a real fancy gent with your big words! I hates to break it to you, love, but there ain't but one kind of business transaction I make, and that's you giving me coin if you want to take a tumble. You don't gets to pay me once and be taking my services all week. Now if you got more coin that's another matter." She tugged on her skirts, and he felt his hands tremble with frustration as they traced fitfully along the bedsheets that draped across his lap, barely concealing the evidence of his need. That was the problem; he didn't exactly have more coin. Not right now, anyway.

"You're a cruel woman, Molly," he said, deciding to change tactics – perhaps he could appeal to her womanly compassion – surely even whores still possessed that in some measure. "To deny a man in his need so. Surely you could at least lend me a hand."

She scowled at him as she finished dressing, but he detected a measure of resigned irritation in her countenance. "My name ain't Molly! It's Margie. And I told you already – "

"Yes, you don't work for free. You did mention that. But Margie," he said smoothly, as though he'd not forgotten her name mere moments earlier, "you are quite lovely, and quite talented, I must say. I would dearly love to enjoy your company again. But you have to understand, coin can be a bit hard to come by when the seas are rough. I regret I have nothing more to give you. But I promise you my penury won't last long, and when I've coin to spend, I would very much like to spend it with you." He paused for dramatic effect. "That is, if you give me a reason to show you particular loyalty. There are many lovely ladies vying for the attentions of sailors with coin to spend on this island." Well, there were many ladies, certainly, though comparably few who could be called 'lovely' with any degree of verisimilitude; though, of course, he was not about to say so to Margie.

He could see the conflict warring across her features and felt a thrill of triumph as she finally relented, heaving a vexed sigh and approaching the bed with a haste that made no effort to conceal her irritation.

"Fine," she snapped, kneeling down beside the bed and gesturing impatiently at him. "Well, come on over, then. And you'd better be quick about it. I ain't going to tug on you for the rest of the morning."

Unable to suppress a licentious grin, he tossed the bedsheet aside and shifted over to the edge of the bed, issuing a low growl as she took him in her hands. He slid his hands through her auburn tresses and sighed contentedly.

"Margie," he said slightly breathlessly as she began to move her hands along him, "this is very nice – wonderful in fact – but your lips are so warm, and inviting, and perhaps – "

She shot him a murderous glare even as her hands did not pause in their rapid ministrations. "Don't push your luck, you scurvy dog. You're getting more than enough as it is."

He decided that she was right, and that it would be best to remain silent as she worked, lest he provoke her ire before she finished the job and left him in a state of even more agonizing want than he had been in to start. But she was indeed talented, and before long, he felt his release shudder through him, and he grunted in satisfaction as he gripped his hands tightly in her hair. The tremors of his pleasure reverberated through him, serving to help blow away the lingering cobwebs of the previous night's drink. Feeling his breathing return to normal as he came back into himself, he looked down to regard her with a satisfied grin, only to find that she'd already risen to her feet and was halfway to the door.

"That was marvellous, Mol – Margie," he said, catching himself (he hoped) in time. Why did he keep wanting to call her Molly? There must be another tavern whore named Molly, he reasoned; perhaps also with red hair? Yes, that would make sense. But Margie seemed unmoved by his gratitude, and turned over her shoulder to toss one last caustic glare his way.

"Save your flattery, you rum-soaked blackguard. Don't think I won't be remembering your promise!" And with that she was out the door, and he was alone in the small, shabby room.

"Well," he murmured to himself as he rose to his feet (steadily, he noted with pride) and began the search for his breeches, discarded somewhere in the recesses of the room late last night in the throes of passion. "I wouldn't exactly say I made a promise. It was really more of an insinuation."

He reflected, as he tugged on his breeches, that, once upon a time, years ago, such behaviour as he'd just engaged in would have been unthinkable, appalling; he had been a man once who had adhered to a strict code of honour and chivalry; a true gentleman of noble bearing and sterling reputation. He angrily dismissed the unwelcome ruminations as he tugged his shirt over his head. He rarely thought about those days anymore, and with every whore he fucked, every bottle of rum he desperately swilled, every act of dubious moral and legal repute he performed, he felt those memories fade just a bit more, until they had become almost a myth, a story of a different man in a different life that wasn't his. That man was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

And good riddance to him, he thought darkly as he raked a hand through his unkempt, unbound dark hair. That man had been an uptight, naive, and stupid bugger anyway. Feeling the good mood from his sexual release suddenly dissipating, he cast his gaze around the room for the rum, before remembering that he'd drank the last and thrown the empty bottle into the corner. Well, nothing for it but to get another, then. Shrugging on his overcoat and belt, and checking that his pistol and sword were properly in place, he pushed open the bedroom door and made his way out and downstairs to the tavern, hoping that Crusty still trusted him enough to sell him a bottle on credit.

Sidling up to the tavern's bar, he slid onto a rickety old stool and waited for Crusty to look up from the tankard he was dutifully polishing with a filthy, sodden rag. Crusty (so named for a rather unfortunate skin condition he claimed he'd contracted in Brazil) at last glanced up from his futile task, and regarded James with a disapproving frown.

"Margie sure came stormin' down those stairs in quite the huff," Crusty growled, setting the tankard down none-too-gently on the bar. "Mutterin' somethin' about 'bloody pirates' and all their 'empty promises.' You tryin' to seduce me workin' gals away, Norrington?"

"Of course not," James scoffed, casting his eyes behind Crusty to survey the bottles of liquor that lined the shelf behind the bar. "And I'm not a bloody pirate. I only suggested to her that perhaps I might show her favour in the future if she, er… " He trailed off, not wanting to admit that he'd cajoled a complimentary favour from the whore, knowing Crusty would not take kindly to the loss of income.

But he was safe; Crusty, misinterpreting his intent, merely raised his eyebrows in 'understanding,' no doubt imagining that James had wooed her with false words of devotion and love. "Ahh, I see," he said, though clearly he didn't. Then he burst out into a loud guffaw. "Ah, yer a scoundrel and a rake, Mr. Norrington! I got to admit, I was fair surprised as anyone when you sauntered in here all those years ago still in the tatters o' yer navy blues. I never thought you'd last a month, to tell the God's honest truth. But it looks like Tortuga fits you like a glove, it does."

The mention of his former career, recalling his own earlier musings, served only to exacerbate James's foul mood, and he remembered why he'd come down to the bar in the first place.

"Crusty," he said firmly, drawing himself up straighter, his muscle memory recalling the naval bearing he'd once worn without a second thought. "I need more rum."

"Aye, do you now?" Crusty responded, his voice thick with sarcasm. "And I suppose you expect this one to be on the house as well?"

"Well, I – "

"Forget it," Crusty responded gruffly, ignoring the murderous glare he received from the other man. "That's a dozen bottles I've sold you on credit, now. No more."

"God damn it, man!" James exploded in desperate frustration, his eyes wavering from Crusty's iron-clad glare to the enticing row of rum bottles behind. "You know the seas have been stormy and rough for weeks now! There are few ships coming or going and none of them are hiring on hands! And you know I'll be good for it as soon as I have gold. I give you my word!"

"It ain't your word I doubt!" Crusty shot back. "But your word ain't going to keep me in business, is it? I said no and I mean it this time. Come back with coin enough to pay off your debts and maybe I'll reconsider."

With a snarl, James pushed away from the bar, jerking his coat around him as he stalked towards the door. "A fine friend you are, Crusty! A fine one indeed!" he bellowed as he threw the door open with vehemence. Crusty, no stranger to such outbursts from drunkards, merely shrugged and went back to wiping down the bar with the stained, filthy cloth.

* * *

James slammed the door to the Mermaid's Tail tavern and stormed out into the street, wrinkling his nose at the fetid odours that pervaded the air along the main thoroughfare of the small island port. He set off down the street without a clear destination in mind, his mind broiling with a heady stew of unpleasant memories, grim appraisals of his dire financial straits, and desperation borne of his impending deprivation of liquor.

Ordinarily, things weren't this bad – he usually had coin enough, taking whatever seafaring jobs presented themselves, and it was enough to pay for his room, his board, his drink, and his whores. Things had been hand-to-mouth for the past several months, ever since the ship on which he'd been a reliable mate had been scuppered off the coast of Martinique in order to keep it out of the hands of privateers, and he'd been unable to find another ship that would take him on as a member of the permanent crew. It seemed that the pirates, privateers, and disreputable merchants who made port in Tortuga weren't overly keen to hire a former commodore of the Royal Navy to man their ship.

He felt his lip curl as he was reminded once again of how far he'd fallen. Curse and damn them all, from the Lord Admiral of the Royal Navy and the King himself, to that damnable blacksmith Turner and the two-faced vixen he'd stolen away, and most of all, that bloody pirate bastard Jack god-damned Sparrow. A pox on them all. He felt his hands twitch with a by-now familiar need. God above, he needed a drink.

Which brought him back to the problem at hand. Crusty was the closest thing he had to a friend in this miserable hellhole, and if even Crusty wouldn't extend his credit… well, that _did_ leave him in a precarious position. He needed coin, and he needed some now. As if to emphasize the treacherous weather that had landed him in this penniless predicament, the wind gusted fiercely around him, billowing his overcoat out behind him and whipping his untied hair about his face. He shoved a hand to his face to brush the stray strands of dark hair out of his eyes, and, looking up, he realized he'd arrived in front of the Laughing Wench, one of the less-reputable taverns on Tortuga (not that there was any such thing as a reputable tavern on Tortuga, to be truthful).

And there, like divine providence, the solution to his quandary stood, shouting and laughing and weaving drunkenly and carrying on before him – Brawlin' Bill Hardy and his faithful retinue of lackeys, stumbling uneasily through the door of the Wench.

Brawlin' Bill Hardy was a pirate of middling renown, infamous around Tortuga for his endless appetite for liquor and women (which made him not unlike most men who lived on Tortuga, but it was said he could consume enough rum in a night to kill a lesser man and still have enough spirit left to carry on with a wench besides). And such appetites cost coin (as James knew well) – which meant that he owed many men many debts.

James Norrington, it so happened, was one of those men. He felt the beginnings of a feral grin, and he checked that his blade, his knife, and his pistol were at the ready, just in case this confrontation went less than amicably. Because if Brawlin' Bill Hardy was swaggering into the Laughing Wench, it meant he had coin to spend. Coin that he owed on a debt – a debt James intended to collect without further delay.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, James threw open the door and pushed his way into the Laughing Wench.


	2. Ebb and Flow

**Author's Note: Thanks to all who read and reviewed! It's very much appreciated, and I hope you're enjoying the story. This chapter definitely earns an M rating for language, so be advised, and, because I forgot to stick this into my author's note last chapter: I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean or James Norrington; if I did, you can be sure he would have had a happier fate ;) It all belongs to Disney; I'm just playing in the sandbox.**

* * *

The Laughing Wench was infamous throughout the Caribbean for having the strongest rotgut and the most wanton whores of any sailor's tavern at any port of call; consequently, it tended to attract a certain calibre of clientele for whom commonplace spirits and wenches would no longer suffice. James himself had been to the place only once, for once had been enough; he was not likely to ever forget the misery of the morning after, which he'd spent depositing the contents of his stomach into a chamber pot. Nor was he apt to forget the shocking debauchery of the lass he'd hired for company that night, memories which still had the power to bring a shame-filled flush to his cheeks. He might be a battered wreck of a man, living a life of sin and iniquity in the wretched pisshole that was Tortuga, but he took comfort in knowing that he hadn't hit rock bottom – not as long as he managed to avoid the lure of the Laughing Wench.

Brawlin' Bill Hardy, however, was another story entirely. Already he had a whore in his lap and a mug in his hand, and James could hear his boisterous bellow rising above the general raucous din of the tavern. He and his minions sat at a table near the bar, and James kept to the shadows near the back of the pub as he casually moved closer, waiting for Hardy to finish up his mug and demand another.

"Another round!" Hardy roared, slamming his mug onto the table with emphatic force. His now-free hand dove into the woman's skirts, and she squealed as he pinched her under her petticoats. "A round for all me men! Ain't every day ye get to celebrate a bounty such as this!"

Well, now – it sounded like Brawlin' Bill had amassed quite the haul of treasure on his latest misadventures, if he was inclined to be so generous as to buy a round for his men (even if it was, all things considered, a round of the Laughing Wench's rotgut). A shame he hadn't thought to settle his debts before celebrating his good fortune. Such a pity, James mused as he moved out of the shadows and towards Hardy's table.

"How about a round for me, Hardy?" he said, sliding smoothly into a chair beside Brawlin' Bill, careful to keep all of Hardy's cronies within his sight.

Hardy spluttered out of mouthful of rum and turned to stare balefully at the interloper who'd insinuated himself into the middle of his merrymaking, his eyes narrowing in suspicion as recognition set in.

"Norrington," he growled, and James felt the tension in the air thicken as Hardy's thugs shifted nervously, hands discreetly but perceptibly moving towards their weapons. James was not concerned – he already had his hand resting comfortably against the hilt of his dagger, tucked away covertly in a pocket of his coat.

"Hardy," he replied. "Quite the festivities you have going on over here. What's the occasion?"

Brawlin' Bill had never been the brightest or most perceptive of men, but even he could tell when he was being baited. "Ain't none of yer goddamn business, ye Navy lapdog. Go buy yer own grog."

"It seems to me that you have more than enough to go around," James noted, gesturing at the table full of empty bottles and mugs. "Why, you must be positively flush with gold."

"And what business is it o' yers? We ain't mates and I don't owe ye nothin'! Now be gone with ye." Hardy turned with an exaggerated flair back to the lady astride his lap, who by now regarded him with wary unease.

"Well, that's not exactly true, is it, Hardy? As a matter of fact, you do owe me something," James said. There was steel in his voice, now, and his eyes met the whore's with stern purpose. Understanding that the situation at the table was about to become less than pleasant, she quickly lifted her skirts and slipped out of Hardy's grasp and off his lap, earning a bark of protest from the pirate.

"Where are ye going, ye faithless slag?" he bellowed after the woman, who'd disappeared back into the general hubbub of the tavern. He whirled back to James, eyes blazing in rage. "Ye be scarin' off my company, Navy dog. I don't be appreciatin' that much."

"You owe me twenty pounds sterling," James said without further prelude, any traces of levity or banter in his voice utterly gone. "I intend to collect that debt from you. Now."

His glare was fixed squarely on Hardy, but James sensed the other men tensing out of the corner of his eye, readying for action. He was not worried about them, not as long as he could see them. They were lackeys, tagalongs of the most spineless and mewling sort, and they would do nothing without Brawlin' Bill's say-so. The trick, then, was to remove Hardy as a threat before things got ugly.

The din in the tavern seemed to quiet a little, as the other men littered nearby paused in their revelries to watch the brewing confrontation. James knew how he chose to deal with Hardy now would either gain or lose him a great deal of respect from the rogue's gallery of pirates, thieves, and villains who populated the Laughing Wench, and who would no doubt gossip about any sort of bar fight over mugs of grog back on their ships. It wasn't that he gave a tinker's damn for their esteem, but being respected – and feared – had its advantages in a place like Tortuga.

"Do ye, now." Hardy's voice was low and dangerous. "Well, there's just a slight problem, mate. I – "

But whatever Hardy was going to say was lost to a wailing scream of agony as James, abruptly and without preamble, drew his dagger from within his coat and drove it forcefully through Hardy's prone hand and into the table beneath.

Pandemonium erupted. Hardy's men, dumbfounded and slack-jawed, goggled about in stupefaction; Hardy roared with pain and rage and, staring at his impaled hand for a long, horrified moment, eventually gathered enough of his wits to reach with his other hand for the blade hanging at his side –

But he'd taken too long and did not get very far, his momentum stopped abruptly by the sharp tip of a blade poking into his throat. James had drawn his cutlass with his right hand as soon as he'd delivered the dagger with the other, and he now held Hardy quite helplessly at swordpoint, scraping the blade softly with idle menace against the bearded hollow of the other man's throat.

"There's no problem, _mate_," James said, pressing the blade ever-so-lightly against Hardy's Adam's apple, just enough to draw forth a small bead of blood. "That is, unless you don't settle your debts with me, and settle them now. In that event, I concede you might well be in a spot of trouble. Mate."

The tavern had gone quiet. All eyes were riveted on the unfolding drama, at the scene of Brawlin' Bill Hardy pinned between a dagger in his hand and a sword at his throat, his usual cronies unsure or unwilling to help. As the seconds ticked by, James increased the pressure on the blade by increments, until the blood droplets beading at Hardy's neck had become a small trickle, and then a steadier ooze. Hardy swallowed thickly, an involuntary reflex borne of nerves, and winced in pain as the movement caused the blade to bite deeper and open the cut wider. Blood dribbled down his throat in a steady stream.

"Come on, Bill, what'll it be? Lose your coin or lose your head? It seems a rather simple choice," James taunted.

He had Hardy dead to rights and he knew it – and Hardy knew it, too.

"All right, all right!" Hardy gasped. "Just promise ye won't cut off me head while I'm reachin' for me coin purse." And so James waited, blade still at the ready and jabbing into Hardy's throat, while the pirate reached his hand down to his waist and, at last, with an incoherent snarl of rage, tossed the purse on the table.

"There's yer god-damned coin, ye back-bitin' rat!" he bellowed. "Now take yer blade off me throat and take yer leave!"

James reached down to the coin purse with his free hand – leaving his sword-hand, and the blade, in place at Hardy's neck – and opened it up and poured the contents on the table. Fourteen coins.

"Hardy, you absolute dullard," he said wearily, pressing the blade tighter and drawing yet more blood. "I always knew you were a liar and a fool, but I never thought you'd be stupid enough to try and cheat a man holding a blade to your throat."

"That's all I got on me, I swear!" Hardy exclaimed. "The rest is – " He abruptly silenced himself, apparently aware that he was about to reveal where he stashed his booty to every blackguard in the tavern.

James, for his part, only raised his brows in amused exasperation. "Of course," he said smoothly. "Well then, I am left with no choice but to collect the remainder from your friends here." One of Hardy's men, a dull-eyed, slack-jawed simpleton everyone knew, fittingly, as Simple Pete, gawped in surprise and dismay.

"Aw, now – that ain't fair!" Pete sputtered. "I don't owe you no money!"

"No, but your captain does," James replied. "And I'm sure he'll be happy to pay you recompense if you save him from getting his throat slit."

Pete continued to gawp like a fish, his flat eyes darting back and forth between James and Hardy, when the latter man, quite tired now of having a cutlass at his neck, snapped, "For God's sake, ye idiot, just give him yer coin!"

And so Simple Pete, after much fumbling, tossed a pile of coins onto the table. Eight more. Hardy, though not a bright man, was brighter than Simple Pete, and he knew that eight and fourteen was more than the twenty originally demanded.

"Hey, that's two more than you asked for!" he protested as James gathered up the coins and stashed them back into Hardy's abandoned purse, which he then slipped into his own coat.

"Consider it a fee for my trouble," James said smoothly. Backing away slowly, he removed the cutlass at last, and Hardy's hand instantly shot up to stanch the flow of blood that streamed steadily down his neck.

"Thank you, gents," James said as he wiped the blood from the tip of his blade on the sleeve of his coat. "Now we are quits. I trust our paths won't cross again." And so he began to back towards the door of the Laughing Wench (for, after all, one did not turn one's back on four angry pirates from whom one has just extorted money), regretting the loss of his dagger, but judging the loss worth the additional time he'd bought in accounting for Hardy to remove it himself. James bowed deeply in mock courtesy, according the men one final insult before pushing open the door to the tavern and exiting to the streets of Tortuga.

Once safely out of the Laughing Wench, he hastened his pace and made for another tavern down the road. He knew, of course, that he hadn't seen the last of Hardy and his men. No man on Tortuga, and no pirate worth his salt, could abide such insult, such public humiliation. And so he knew that they would come for him, tonight, hoping to find him dead drunk and buried deep in a tavern whore – all the easier to slip a blade between his ribs and take back the coin he'd just wrung from them.

He was determined not to make it so simple for them. Not that he would not fight them – he would, he had to, or else he'd always wonder where they were, and when the blade would find him – but he would do so on his own terms. And he knew just the place to do it.

But first, he mused as he jingled the coin that now filled his pockets, he needed a drink.

* * *

James reclined against the back wall of the alley, doing his level best to ignore the stench of stale piss and liquor that permeated the narrow passageway. He took a long swig of his bottle and reminded himself that, although the alley was ferociously rank and ordinarily not the sort of place he'd prefer to tarry, it was necessary for his immediate purposes - between the two ramshackle wooden buildings hemming him in on either side and the stone wall at his back, the only means of approach was the entrance at the street, ensuring that he could not be surrounded or ambushed. If - no, when – Bill Hardy and his motley crew came for him, they'd have to come at him head on.

Despite his nickname, "Brawlin' Bill" wasn't much of a fighter - James had seen him in action before (hell, he'd traded blows with him before), and he knew that his primary strength was his ever-present but puzzlingly loyal band of henchmen, who made sure that every fight Brawlin' Bill started was an unfair one. But the man's fighting form itself was poor - his punches were all strength and no finesse, and his skills with a blade were middling at best. James was a fair tavern brawler; he was brawny enough to hold his own, and three hard years in Tortuga had only improved his skills.

But blades - that was another matter. He was an impeccable swordsman and always had been, even from his midshipman days. The only reason he hadn't challenged Bill Hardy to a duel before was the certainty of a cowardly blade in the back courtesy of one of Hardy's lackeys. But he'd eliminated that advantage tonight, with the alleyway protecting his back and flanks. He'd finally get his fair fight with Brawlin' Bill after all.

Unless, of course, the shitheel coward had decided to cut his losses and turn tail. Having stewed now in the piss-soaked alley for at least two hours, James downed the last of the rum and tossed the bottle with a curse. And it didn't help matters that his own need to piss had grown rather urgent, no doubt a combination of the rum and the long idling wait. He fought the urge as long as he could, certain that as soon as he'd unbuttoned his trousers, Hardy and his cronies would round the corner and charge into the alley, catching him with his cock in his hand and his cutlass in its sheath. But eventually, he could hold out no longer, and, with a growl of annoyance, he swiftly unbuttoned his pants and relieved himself against the wall with a contented sigh.

And, of course, that was the moment when four dark silhouettes appeared at the entrance of the alleyway, with knives and cutlasses drawn. The sheer absurdity of the coincidence drew a bark of laughter from James, and as the first silhouette stepped closer, out of the shadows, he could see Bill Hardy's ugly, pockmarked face.

"Don't suppose you mind letting me finish, lads?" James said, still perversely amused. Fate really did have a deliciously cruel sense of humour.

"Supposin' ye think it's funny to be facing four armed men with naught but yer prick, Commodore?" Bill drawled, imagining that he'd struck a nerve with his reference to James' old naval rank. But his earlier morning musings had already desensitized him to that line of attack, and so James paid him no heed as he tucked himself back into his trousers and buttoned them up.

"Aw, gee, boss, no wonder all the whores likes him best! You get a look at that?" Simple Pete, as daft and tactless as ever, apparently hadn't realized that implying that his captain was a lesser man was perhaps not the wisest thing he could've said. Hardy whipped around to glower furiously at Pete, and the simpleton drew back in fear – if looks could kill, Simple Pete surely would've dropped over dead.

"Shut yer mouth, ye gormless ponce! What do ye know about what the whores like?" Hardy roared. "Besides, I didn't see nothing that impressive."

James felt his eyebrows quirk in amusement as the beginnings of a plan came together. Perhaps it had been for the best that Hardy and his crew had caught him with his pants down, after all.

"Now now, Bill, jealousy doesn't become you. I think Simple Pete might be onto something," he said. "I've heard that some of the ladies have taken to calling you Half-Mast Hardy. It must be quite humiliating."

It wasn't (as far as James knew) true, but that was beside the point, as Brawlin' Bill Hardy's face flushed red as a tomato. "No they don't!" he squawked. Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What would ye know about it anyway? Ye been asking around about me cock, have ye? Fancy a buggering, do ye?"

"There was no need to ask," James said smoothly, every bit the spider who was slowly but surely enticing the fly into his web. "Tortuga is a small island, Hardy. I'm sure we have shared many of the same lasses. The only thing looser than a whore's cunt is her wagging tongue. So trust me, I've heard all about your... inadequacies."

He felt the smallest, briefest pang of guilt for so crudely and dishonestly impugning the discretion of the working women of Tortuga, but that pang was quickly swallowed by a heady satisfaction as he watched the barb hit home. Brawlin' Bill's face contorted into a florid purple mask of rage and bloodlust.

"You bastard son of a whore, I'll have your head!" he bellowed, charging down the alley, cutlass raised high over his head. Seeming momentarily thrown by their boss's wild fury, the three henchmen hesitated for a moment before charging after Bill with raucous battle cries.

The alley he'd chosen was too narrow to admit more than one man at a time, and in their ill-formed and unplanned rage, the four pirates swept right into the trap James had laid. Brawlin' Bill was first, and he lunged gracelessly forward with his blade. James effortlessly parried the blow, knocking Hardy's sword out of hand and using the momentum to skewer the first henchman, who'd rushed past his captain and right into James's oncoming cutlass. He jerked the blade from the man's guts and cut down the third man, who had also come rushing headlong into the death trap.

It was Simple Pete, strangely enough, the dimmest of them all, who had finally realized that to continue his forward charge was suicide; accordingly, he scrabbled to a halt before the bodies of his comrades, and stood there, gaping and frozen in panic, until James took pity on him and smacked him hard in the head with the flat broadside of his sword. Pete crumpled to the ground, and all that was left was Brawlin' Bill, who'd picked up his sword from where it had fallen senseless from his hands.

"Just us now, Norrington," Hardy grated, readying his cutlass for another lunge. "I'll run ye through, and when yer dead I'll cut off yer balls and use 'em to make me a new coinpurse!"

"No," James said coolly, parrying again Hardy's wild thrust, and, bringing his own blade up and around, he cleaved the man from thigh to shoulder. "You won't." Hardy fell heavily to the ground, his face a mask of shock and horror as he looked to the ruinous, fatal wound that nearly hewed him in two.

James leaned down before the dying man, using the tail of Hardy's coat to wipe the blood from his blade and noting the extent of the wound and its trajectory across Hardy's body.

"Well, it looks like you're Half-Mast Hardy now, after all," he said, and the fading light in Hardy's eyes ignited in one final murderous glare before extinguishing forever.

Kneeling down before the carnage, James surveyed his handiwork. These weren't the first men he'd killed on Tortuga, and he very much doubted they'd be the last, but it had been nothing, to cut down these pirates, and he wondered when he'd stopped feeling the grim gravity that had always – should have always – accompanied taking another man's life.

Shaking away the melancholy, he brought himself back to the present, and realized that, in death, Brawlin' Bill and his minions might be much more generous than they'd been inclined to be in life. Rifling through Hardy's pockets, James grinned in triumph as he found Hardy's spare coin purse, the one he'd claimed he didn't have on him, tucked away in a secret pouch on his belt. An investigation of the other two corpses revealed two similar purses each, and James was more than happy to relieve them of their burden. What use had dead men for coin?

He hesitated a moment longer before Simple Pete. Poor, stupid, gawping Simple Pete, whose only real crime had been to fall in with a captain who'd crossed James Norrington, a crime for which James hadn't felt compelled to take his life. And yet, he felt no such compunctions about taking Pete's coin, and so he did – after all, Pete had just attacked him in an alley (sort of). Besides, if he didn't take it now, some vagrant would be along shortly to relieve Simple Pete of any remaining valuables. Better it fall into his hands now. Pete would be penniless when he awoke, but at least he'd awaken. That was enough mercy for one day on Tortuga.

* * *

And so now it was James celebrating his good fortunes in a Tortuga tavern with a bottle in one hand and a wench in the other, and he reflected on the vagaries of fate, that ficklest bitch of them all. Only this morning he'd been penniless, a wretch, pleading for a favour from an ill-tempered whore; and now he sat with a bottle of fine spirits and surely one of the loveliest lasses on the whole island readily snuggling into the crook of his arm. And only this morning Bill Hardy had swaggered into the Laughing Wench, flush with gold and eager to spend it, and now he lay dead in an alley, a feast for the rats. Such was the ebb and flow of life, and now that the tide had come back in, James was determined to enjoy it to the lees.

"Handsome thing, aren't you," the lass cooed, tangling a hand through his dishevelled hair while the other began to caress him across the chest and shoulders. He'd been smitten by such flatteries long ago, when he was new to Tortuga, until he'd realized that the compliments weren't special or unique to him. Even so, he could tell that the women considered him finer looking than the other men to whom they sold their wares (which, admittedly, wasn't saying much on Tortuga), and so he was usually able to catch the eye of the prettiest girl in the establishment. Tonight had been no exception.

"I'm afraid I pale in comparison to the beauty in my arms," he said. The banter was old and routine by now; the recycled bromides of affection and attraction, the pretence of flirtation and romance quickly segueing into more bawdy and lewd rejoinders as the night went on and the liquor set in, before the parties retired to the task that they'd agreed upon before any words had been exchanged at all. It was an old familiar dance whose steps he knew by heart. And so he felt no hesitation or shame when he reached for the laces of her bodice and began, gently but insistently, to pull them down.

"Aren't you the eager one, handsome?" she gasped in faux offence for her long-gone chastity as his hand slid under the laces. Another move, another step in the age-old dance, and he barely registered her words as he took another pull on the bottle before leaning in to press his lips against the soft skin, his mouth moving lower as his fingers and hands pulled down ever more of her bodice –

"James Norrington? Oh my God, James? Is that you?"

A voice from another world – another life, _that man's_ life – came crashing through his senses, and all thoughts of the lass and her creamy décolletage were wiped away in an instant. He pulled back and searched for the ghost, the damnable accursed ghost whose voice had spoken to him, who had somehow, after all these years, found him here, in his own private hell.

And there she was, just as beautiful as ever, God damn her to hell. The whore in his lap was entirely forgotten.

"Elizabeth Swann? What the hell are you doing here?"


	3. Mandolin

**A/N: Thanks again to all who read and review. It's very appreciated! **

* * *

He stared at her in stunned disbelief. What _was_ she doing here? She belonged to his old life – that other man's life – which meant that she _certainly_ had no place on Tortuga. He'd come here, all those years ago, for precisely that reason – so he could be as far rid of any reminders of what he'd lost as possible. And yet here she stood before him, the most excruciating reminder of all. His disbelief was replaced, quickly and readily, by anger.

But he'd asked her a question, after all, and so she answered. "I'm… I'm here on personal business," she said, and he felt his ire percolate deeper at her evasive answer. But once again, she spoke before he had the chance.

"What on earth are _you_ doing here? Besides… ah… taking your pleasure, that is?" Her pointed reference to the whore, who was by now regarding James with an exasperated look (no doubt believing that Elizabeth was his wife, having caught him _in flagrante_), broke through his trance, and he rose angrily to his feet.

"And since when have you given a good goddamn about my _pleasure_?" he shot back, noticing out of the corner of his eye that the whore, shaking her head in disgust, had abandoned his side to try her fortunes with another tavern patron. "Don't you dare presume to judge me, Miss Swann."

Taken aback by his tone, Elizabeth's eyes flashed in indignation. "I wasn't – oh, forget it! I just… I can't imagine seeing you here, in a place like this," she finished in a quieter tone.

"I could say the same for you. And you never did answer my question," he drawled, taking a swig of the bottle – God, he'd need another of these before the night was through, he could tell already. Wasn't he supposed to be celebrating?

"I told you, it's personal."

"Personal." He regarded her, truly regarded her, for the first time since she'd appeared rather magically before him just moments ago. She was dressed, he noticed now, oddly, in a man's shirt and coat and breeches, and her hair tied up in a queue and hidden under a hat. So she didn't wish for anyone to know she was a woman. Certainly not an unwise choice on Tortuga, but it implied –

"Are you alone, Miss Swann? Tortuga is no place for a solitary woman." He cast his eyes around the tavern; none of the other men seemed to be paying any heed to their conversation.

"I can manage just fine on my own, thank you very much," she said primly, placing a hand at her hip, where James could see a sword resting beneath the hem of her overcoat. He could not suppress a smirk – he'd had no idea how these past three years had treated her, but he was reasonably sure that, regardless of her bravado, her swordsmanship skills were not sufficient to hold off a band of heated, lusty pirates should the need arise.

He told himself, later, that it was chivalry (what little of it he still possessed) that inspired him to take her arm and escort her somewhere more private, out of the ruckus of the crowded tavern and back to a small table in the corner of the quieter Mermaid's Tail. He told himself that it had nothing to do with the fact that his rented room was a mere two score of steps from the downstairs tavern. But then again, he told himself many things these days, most of them untrue.

"Crusty," he said cheerfully, swaggering up to the bar and slapping down a pile of coins. "I told you I was good for it, didn't I? And now how about a drink each for me and the lady?"

Crusty set down the mug he was polishing (James idly wondered if it was the same mug he'd been polishing this morning) and, giving James a skeptical glance, scooped the coins into the meaty palm of his hand.

"That's a lady?"

"Just get us some rum, Crusty."

Crusty dropped the coins in his pouch and turned to the wall of bottles behind the bar. "Suppose I shouldn't be askin' how you came into coin all of a sudden?" he said, selecting two bottles and setting them on the bar in front of James, who snatched them up gratefully.

"I thought the cardinal rule of Tortuga was to never ask how a man came into coin?" James retorted, lifting one of the bottles in a mock salute as he returned to the table in the corner to join Elizabeth. Crusty, ever unfazed, merely shook his head and resumed polishing the hopelessly filthy mug.

"Oh, Mr. Norrington, I don't – I don't think a whole bottle of this is a good idea," Elizabeth said hesitantly when he placed her bottle in front of her. Taking a long pull on his own, he regarded her with a bemused raise of his eyebrows.

"'Mr. Norrington'? What happened to 'James'?" he said, unable to keep the sharp edge from his mirthful tone.

"Fine, _James_," she replied crossly. "I don't think I should drink a whole bottle of rum. What are we doing here, anyway?"

"We're talking," he said simply. "And drink up. You could stand to loosen up a bit." He grinned around the bottle as he took another drink, watching the indignation play across her face at his last remark. Reluctantly, she took a small sip, which she bravely managed to swallow without incident, though she made a horrid face as the liquor coursed down her throat.

"Oh, it's not that bad," James chided. "You want some truly vile stuff, you should go to the Laughing Wench. Their rum is the Devil's own creation." He took another long pull from his own bottle before setting it down on the table and leaning in, his gaze meeting hers intently. "So, are you going to tell me what 'personal' business brings you to the arsehole of the world?"

She frowned at him. "When did you become so vulgar, Mr. Norring – James? Drinking rum from a bottle, swearing in front of a lady? Honestly, you've changed."

He regarded her with a wild incredulity before barking out a mirthless laugh and taking a swig from his bottle. "Only realizing that now, are you?" he taunted. "Tell me, what was your first clue? The rum? The whore? The fact that I'm exiled on this bleeding shithole of an island? Tell me how much I've changed from the man who was so dreadfully dull you just could not bear the thought of marrying him."

She recoiled as if slapped. "I never – James, I – I never thought – " she spluttered, and he felt his ire mounting, fuelled by the rum, her stammering incoherence, and his own traitorous thoughts.

"Do not lie to me," he grated. "I saw the way you looked at me all those years ago. As if you'd rather run to the ends of the earth and live in rags than tolerate another moment of my presence." A vicious smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Well, it looks as though you got your wish. So tell me, Miss Swann. How is life as a pirate? Is it everything you'd dreamed of and more? The adventure, the excitement? The romance?"

His last words were pointed, and she flushed hotly under his withering glare. "You wanted to know why I'm here?" she spat. "Fine. I'm looking for Will."

His brows shot up nearly to his hairline in surprise. "Mr. Turner? You mean to say you've lost him?"

"I haven't lost him!" she shrilled. "It's just that – he was looking for something – something to do with his father, he said, and he said it might take some time, but it's been nearly a year, and I just –"

He knew, at that moment, that he should feel pity for her. A woman, alone, searching for the man she loved, who might well be dead. It was very tragic, really.

"A year? My dear," he said mockingly, "unless he traveled to the South China Sea in search of… whatever it is he's looking for… I cannot imagine his voyage could have taken so long. Perhaps you are holding on to false hope."

It was cruel, he knew. Once, that would have mattered to him. But the longer he looked at her, the more he felt the ire within him twisting and turning, a savage beast feeding on his resentment of the memories she stirred.

"He's not dead!" she cried out, tears springing to her eyes. "How could you say such a thing?"

"I _said_ no such thing," he replied. "Perhaps he lives. But perhaps he has decided to pursue… other shores, if you will."

When she slapped him, he welcomed the blow, rejoicing that he'd cajoled such a rise out of her.

"You bastard!" she hissed. "How dare you?"

"How dare I, indeed," he said indifferently, taking a long, leisurely pull on his bottle, resolutely ignoring the stinging of his cheek. "But the fact remains that you seem to have misplaced your – is he your fiancé, still? Or have you married him yet? No matter, you seem to have misplaced your _lover_," he said this last word with a curl of his lip, "and now you have journeyed, all alone, to the most godforsaken place known to man in search of him. So tell me, Miss Swann," he said, his voice low, "what this says about Mr. Turner's devotion to you?"

"Don't you dare question Will's love for me! Why are you being so cruel?" Her eyes, moist with unshed tears, regarded him as she would a stranger. Maybe he was.

"I prefer the term 'brutally honest,'" he said, taking another drink. "What was your plan, if I may ask? Did you think you would just meander from tavern to tavern, hoping you'd stumble across Mr. Turner along the way? Perhaps discover him in a similar position as you discovered me?" He _was_ being cruel now, deliberately, and he couldn't consciously say why.

Her hand lashed out again to slap his face, but as it did so he reached up and snagged her wrist in an iron grip, pulling her roughly towards him until her face was inches from his. Her lips were red and inviting and he longed to close the distance between them and taste her.

"Go to hell," she seethed, eyes blazing. "What _happened_ to you, James?"

He pulled back abruptly, releasing her wrist. "Miss Swann, the world is cruel," he said. "The sooner you learn that, the sooner you'll let go of your childish fantasies."

"Childish fantasies?" she repeated. "Do you mean love?" She fixed her gaze on his, as if trying to see into him, see the man he used to be somewhere inside. "You loved me once, you know."

"I was a fool once," he said coldly. "I won't make the same mistake again."

She shook her head firmly. "No, I don't believe that," she said, and he cocked a curious eyebrow at her abrupt change in tone. "You were always a good man, James. I think you still are. Whatever happened to you, whatever caused you this much pain, I'm sorry."

The savage beast inside him, the howling creature that gorged on a steady diet of hatred and bile, at last broke free. The dam burst open, three years of buried resentments and repressed animosities spilling out of him in a flood.

"You know exactly what happened to me!" He bit out each word as though spitting something distasteful from his mouth. "Or have you forgotten how you used and manipulated me, promising your affections in return for my assistance – my aid in rescuing the man you truly loved? How you led me, blind and unaware of the horrors in store, into an ambush? How you neglected to share with me the rather pertinent detail of the curse that rendered the pirates immortal? Good men died that day, Miss Swann! Men under my command, men for whom I was responsible, dead because I could not deny my _fiancée_," and it was this word he imbued with the most bitterness of all, "her pleas for help!"

She stared at him, wide-eyed, but he pressed on relentlessly. "And I shall not soon forget your gratitude, oh no. Humiliating me in front of the entire town, absconding with pirates – _pirates!_ – yet still, I felt moved by your appeals for mercy, and so I set them free! I abandoned my duty, I forgot myself, forgot my place, and I lost everything. I lost my ship. I lost my crew. I lost my career and I lost my life, all because of you, and you dare to offer me your sympathy?" His voice had steadily risen with each word so that now he was fair shouting, and he leaned in, pressing his face close to hers, and yet again he felt the overwhelming urge to taste those sweet lips, to seize and crush them between his own.

"So yes, my words were cruel, I admit. I have treated you as you have treated me. And I will welcome your hatred in return." His voice was quiet once more, thrumming with a dangerous heat. "I will welcome your contempt. But I will never welcome your pity."

She had remained silent throughout his tirade, taking the hurricane-force strength of his rage full-on and without flinching, and he grudgingly admitted that he respected her for it. The beast within him was not sated; it still howled in rage, howled for vengeance, howled for James to stop waiting and just take her now, press her against him, make her to feel all that he'd felt in these last miserable years. But he held it at bay, though he did not retreat from the proximity he'd closed with her.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet but strong. "James… whether or not you believe me, whether or not you want to hear me speak the words, please know that I truly am sorry. I never meant to hurt you or betray you, not for a moment. That was never my intention."

There was a sincerity to her words, and if so much hadn't happened, it might have been enough. She moved a hand slowly, tremulously, towards his face, waiting for his inevitable rebuff; when it did not come, she placed her palm gently on his cheek, where she'd slapped him earlier. His breath hitched in his throat as she traced a delicate path down the line of his stubbly jaw with her fingers, and he lifted his hand and placed it atop hers, his callused fingertips stroking patterns along the back of her hand. Her tongue flitted out unconsciously, to wet her lips, and he felt a too-familiar stirring in his blood, his longing to rake his teeth across her soft mouth growing more and more unbearable.

"Elizabeth," he whispered, judging it time to abandon formality. "Are you aware of the power you have? Do you have any idea what you can do? You pluck at the strings of men's hearts like a mandolin, and in your wake only the echo remains." And finally the longing grew too great, and he leaned in and kissed her.

He'd imagined this moment so many times, in his other life; what it would be like to really and truly kiss Elizabeth Swann, to move his lips sinuously against hers, to flick his tongue against her mouth until she admitted him inside, to explore the depths of her and taste all her secrets. He felt none of the light, soaring happiness he once imagined he would at the occasion; the well was too poisoned for that now. But as she responded to the kiss and opened her mouth to his plundering tongue, he wondered if perhaps the bitter taste of regret wasn't just as delectable.

He pulled her over to him and onto his lap as the kiss deepened, his hands reaching up to tangle in her hair before remembering that it was confined and hidden away under the ridiculous man's hat she wore. Her clothes were maddening, and his own were feeling increasingly constricting, and he was dimly aware of Crusty at the bar, still polishing away and studiously ignoring the bawdy carrying-on in the corner. James had few compunctions about engaging in lusty teasing with whores in the view of others, but with Elizabeth, it felt wrong somehow, vulgar. And so he broke the kiss and moved his mouth across her jaw to tease at the shell of her ear.

"Come," he whispered, lifting her off his lap as he stood. "Not here."

"James, I…" she whispered, pressed against his chest. He could see the indecision in her eyes; her desire was plain in her swollen lips and smouldering gaze and hooded eyes, but there was something else too – guilt, though whether for him or for Will Turner he could not say.

But whatever fleeting shame she might have been feeling passed her by, because she seized his arms in her grip and leaned in close, her body stretched out against his, and pressed her lips to his neck, and he was undone. With a growl, he crushed her to him, half-leading and half-pulling her to the narrow stairs at the far end of the bar, up towards his room.

There was another recurring fantasy from his other life, which had been the natural extension of the first – imagining what it would be like to at last take Elizabeth to his bed. Would she be bold and passionate? Shy and nervous? Would she be vocal in her pleasure, begging him for more? Would she find him appealing, attractive, desirable as a mate? Such fantasies had helped him endure long, hard months at sea in arduous conditions until he could return to Port Royal and perhaps, one day, discover the answer to his perpetual musings.

The man he used to be certainly never would've imagined that he would discover her like this, sprawled out on a small rickety bed in a cramped, dingy room above a tavern on Tortuga. It was strange undressing her in her men's clothing, but simple – a shirt and breeches were far less complicated than dresses and stays and all that nonsense, after all. His own clothing soon joined the pile of discarded garments, and as he climbed atop the bed and captured her lips in a ravenous kiss, he set about exploring her undiscovered country with rough, quick hands.

All her reservations seemed to be, for the moment at least, forgotten, and she gasped and writhed against him, her hands frenzied in their own exploration of him, and he was reminded of what it was to be touched by a woman who did not have to be paid for her affections. He noted her hiss of pleasure as he captured the peak of her right breast in his mouth and wondered if Will Turner had ever been able to draw such reactions from her. Thinking of Turner brought him a perverse enjoyment, and he smiled against the soft flesh of her belly as he kissed his way down the plane of her body, eager to claim yet more territory away from the damnable blacksmith.

Perhaps even more than he bargained for: he realized, when he curled his fingers into her heat and elicited a sharp gasp of surprise, that she was still a virgin. Resting his face against the inside of her thigh, he panted raggedly, his desire aching and keen, but unsure how to proceed. He didn't think he'd ever bedded a virgin – certainly, there were none on Tortuga, and even before, the women who allowed themselves to be seduced by sailors were usually not blushing innocents. He began to laugh, his shoulders shaking quietly with mirth, at the absurdity of it all. He'd imagined this moment many times before, certainly, but it had always been romantic and sweet, taking place on a soft luxurious bed covered in rose petals and perfume, not in his squalid tiny tavern room in Tortuga.

"James?" Her voice was hesitant above him. "Is… something wrong?"

He could not resist placing a soft kiss to her center, which elicited a squeal of pleasure from her. "You've never done this before," he stated matter-of-factly.

"No," she admitted after a pause. "Will and I – we're not married – well, we were meant to be, several times, but things just kept interrupting, and we always thought we'd wait, but then he left to go look for whatever it is he's looking for and I've been waiting still – " She fell abruptly silent, perhaps fearing she was babbling (which, in truth, she was).

"More the fool Turner, then," James said smoothly, drawing himself up the length of her body until he was level with her gaze. Leaning over her, resting on his forearms, he nuzzled the side of her neck.

"I want you to," she blurted out suddenly, and he stilled at once.

"I want you to," she repeated, more calmly this time, and he rose again to regard her. Her expression was firm, her eyes locked on his. He saw no love there, but nor did he see any doubt; and there was desire in spades, and that was enough for him.

He was gentle, or as gentle as he could be considering how long he'd been aching to slip inside her heat. But she did not cry out, and only squeezed his shoulders in a vise grip for several moments before she relaxed and thrashed her hips impatiently, urging him to move, and then he needed no further encouragement. It was not the slow, sweet lovemaking he'd always imagined with her, but then again, that future had died when she'd abandoned him and disappeared with her pirate blacksmith. Now, all they had was this – rough, desperate, and frantic, driven by a complicated melange of desire, bitterness, regret, and spite. The beast in him howled in triumph as he thrust wildly into her, and the man he'd become felt a vicious surge of glee as he took from her what Will Turner never could.

She came to her release with a series of shuddering gasps and sighs, and he followed shortly after, spilling his seed deep inside her with a growl. Collapsing next to her on the bed, James slipped an arm around her and pulled her close. It was perhaps too intimate a gesture given the nature of their relationship, but he was thoroughly enjoying having a woman in his bed who had chosen to be there for reasons that had nothing to do with coin.

She snuggled up against him as she fell into a soft slumber, but he lay awake, savouring the closest thing to solace he'd felt in a very long time. He knew the spell would be broken tomorrow; she would leave, off to find Will Turner, and he would return to his rudderless, purposeless existence, drowning his sorrows in rum. But at that moment, all the rest of it could be forgotten; if only for one night.


	4. Rum, Regrets, and the Lash

**A/N: Thanks once again to everyone who has read and reviewed this story! I have just finished final exams for the semester (whew), but in the next couple of weeks I'll be doing a lot of traveling, so updates may be a bit slower in the next month or so. I hope to get Chapter 5 done sometime in the next week, though, so hopefully I'll stay mostly on schedule. Now, without further ado...**

* * *

James stood in front of the room's small window clad only in his breeches, taking a drink from last night's neglected bottle as he regarded the bright Caribbean morning. The sunlight was far less offensive to his sensibilities this morning than it had been the day before; but then again, he hadn't imbibed nearly as much rum yesterday, having found himself engaged in other, more pleasurable, pursuits.

He turned to spare a glance back at the bed, where Elizabeth still slumbered, her naked body half-hidden under the sheets. She'd stirred up a hornet's nest of confusion within him; memories he'd tried very hard to bury had risen to the fore of his mind, and he resented their intrusion – resented her intrusion. Not that last night, all things considered, hadn't been worth it. He smiled wolfishly at the memory of her gasping out his name as he took her, and could not help feel a thrill of victory – after the way she'd so publicly rejected him in favour of Will Turner, it was he who'd plucked her first, after all. Yes, he decided; that was worth enduring the unpleasant memories of his spectacular fall from grace.

She stirred restlessly, her body shifting beneath the covers, the sheets falling aside to reveal yet more of her to his lustful gaze, and he felt his cock twitch in response. She would likely regret falling into his bed so eagerly, but he hoped her regrets were not so severe that she would be averse to an encore performance before they went their inevitable separate ways. Once it might have been incongruous to see the governor's daughter, raised to be a proper lady, in such a state of dishabille, and he, raised to be a proper gentleman, standing before her leering with a bottle in his hand; but fate had taken them both far from their intended paths, and James had learned long ago that to question its vagaries was a fool's enterprise of the utmost futility.

She shifted again under the sheets, this time her movement accompanied by the low, drawn-out groan of the newly awakening, and he watched her lift her head from the pillow, her eyes blinking groggily. She turned over to the other side, where he had lain, and, finding it empty, twisted her head around in puzzlement until she found him across the room. He watched the play of emotions dance across her face, from confusion to recognition to a startled, full awareness.

"Good morning," he said casually, smiling down at her as he took a drink.

"Oh my God," she murmured, barely loud enough for him to hear. Her face suffused with a crimson flush as full realization of the previous night's activities crashed down on her with a shattering finality. "Oh my God. No. This didn't happen."

"Oh, but it did," he drawled, taking another pull from the bottle. "And it was quite lovely, by the way."

"No. No! I am betrothed – I am to marry Will! This cannot happen!" She sat upright in agitation, swinging her legs around to get out of the bed – and at once became fully aware of her nudity. She let out a mortified yelp and seized the covers around her, pulling them up to her chin.

"A bit too late for modesty, my dear," he chided, scratching lazily at his bare chest. "I saw it all last night. And then some."

"Ugh!" she exclaimed, regarding him with an incensed glare. "Since when did you become such a… such a… boorish lout?"

"I thought we'd covered that ground quite sufficiently yesterday evening," he replied without pause before swallowing another mouthful.

"Despicable man," she grated, glaring at him balefully and still clutching the bedsheets tightly around herself. Wrapping one hand around her chest to hold the sheets close, she gestured with the other towards the pile of discarded clothing in the corner of the room.

"Bring me my clothes, and leave the room while I dress. I will be on my way and you shan't see me again," she commanded.

He stared at her incredulously for a long moment before bursting into loud gales of laughter.

"Bring you your clothes?" he mocked. "You have the audacity to order me about in my own room? And here I'd thought that perhaps all these years of living the vagabond pirate life had cured you of your suffocating high-society manners. I am curious," he said, his amusement still running high, "whether you command your pirate comrades so imperiously and with such a spoilt air of refinement? Pray tell me how well that goes over on the _Black Pearl_ or whatever accursed pirate barge you sail with these days."

"I can assure you that my 'pirate comrades' would have more respect for my chastity and would not leer at me like the Tortuga filth you've become!" she retorted hotly, pulling the bedsheets tighter. He could not help but smirk at her romantic but assuredly false representation of virtuous pirates.

"Your chastity?" He laughed. "Darling, you lost all claim to that when you begged me to take your maidenhead in the throes of passion last night. It is hardly fair that you should blame me for obliging your wishes."

"I did _not beg_!" she cried furiously, her face flushing in anger and shame – for they both knew she was lying.

"No?" he said curiously, draining the dregs of his bottle and tossing it heedlessly into the corner. He took a step closer to the bed, admiring a fleeting glimpse of her pale legs as she shifted again, straightening up to meet his gaze. "I seem to recall differently. I seem to recall –"

"You plied me with rum! I was not myself!"

"Plied you with rum?" He narrowed his eyes at her, feeling the stirrings of the beast inside him awakening once more. "I think not. One sip from one bottle is not sufficient to inebriate even the most delicate of constitutions." He took another step forward, close enough to reach out and touch her – and he found himself sore tempted, to reach out and run his hands through her unruly waves of golden brown hair.

"I'm afraid you must face the truth, Elizabeth," he said. "You came to me willingly." He paused. "No – you came to me _eagerly_."

With a flash she was on her feet, still clinging tightly to the sheets she'd wrapped around herself.

"You are a complete and _utter_ scoundrel," she snapped, eyes glinting ferociously.

"Mmm," he considered. "Yes, I suppose I am."

"And a drunken cur!"

"Most assuredly so," he agreed.

"You've probably whored your way through every brothel on Tortuga by now! You're no better than a – "

"Pirate?" he finished dangerously, sliding his hands around her waist, feeling the heat of her skin through the thin sheets beneath his palms. He leaned in close, so close, until his lips brushed up against her ear. "But I thought you liked pirates, Miss Swann. Found them… irresistible."

He felt her body tense against him, heard her hiss in a sharp intake of breath, felt her free hand slide between them, traversing the plane of his chest and tangling in the dusting of short hair there.

"Damn you, James," she whispered, her breath hot against his neck. He pulled back to regard her, and found once more in her eyes that intoxicating, fearless desire that had so seduced him the night before. "How is it you're able to do this to me?"

A half-smirk found its way to his face, tugging at the corner of his mouth, and he leaned in close again, grazing his lips against hers.

"I think we both know you're really quite partial to scoundrels, aren't you… Elizabeth?" he murmured against her mouth.

And then she was kissing him fiercely and with great violence, wrapping her arms around his neck and tangling her hands through his hair, the bedsheets dropping to the floor, forgotten in her sudden lust and hunger. It was not a tender kiss; teeth and tongues and lips crashed together and duelled for supremacy, a duel that ended abruptly when she took his lower lip in her teeth and bit down, breaking the skin and drawing blood.

With a feral snarl, he seized her hips in his hands and shoved her up against the wall beside the bed, lifting her thighs until she wrapped her legs around his waist and pinning her there with his body. He tangled one hand in her loose hair and pulled, eliciting a squeal from her as her head jerked up, revealing her creamy neck to his plundering mouth; with the other, he scrabbled at his trousers, unbuttoning them at last and shoving them indecorously down and out of the way. He entered her unceremoniously and without pretence, shuddering at the exquisite feel of being inside her again – God, but she felt so warm, so tight, so god-damned good, better than any Tortuga whore he'd ever had. Better than any woman he'd ever had, to tell the truth. To think she could've – should've – been his, not Turner's.

The thought of Turner sent him into a possessive frenzy, and he bucked against her with unrestrained vigour, unconcerned this time with any notions of gentleness or care. Her arms had twined tight around him, her body stiff and arching against him as she gasped out her pleasure with ragged, rasping pleas, begging him to take her harder, faster; begging him for more. He welcomed her vocal interjections; he knew that Turner had never seen her like this, so wild and abandoned, so lost in the throes of passion and lust that she forgot herself. When her release came, she screamed and dug her nails painfully into his shoulders, gasping out his name in a hoarse, low moan; when his followed shortly after, he thrust into her hard, nailing her to the wall, emptying himself inside her with a ragged groan. Unable to support both his weight and hers on trembling legs, he slid heavily to the floor, dragging her down with him, and there they lay curled in a tangle of limbs, panting, heaving, sweating, and sated.

Some time later – he couldn't possibly have said if it was minutes or hours – she reached over to him and ran her fingers delicately across his chest, tracing a pattern along an old long-forgotten scar that traversed his right pectoral from his shoulder to his breastbone.

"I'd never imagined you had this many scars," she said quietly, trailing her finger down to touch another, longer one that ran a jagged course along his left side and down his ribs.

"A sailor's life is not an easy one," he replied simply, revelling in the tingling sensation her roaming fingers left in their wake. "No man who takes to the sea remains untouched by it for long. Cutlass blades, musket balls, ropes, the lash – all leave their mark."

She continued her idle exploration of him, fingers caressing an old bullet wound in his shoulder; then down his arm, marked by a glancing blow from a pirate's blade long ago; to his hands, where a smattering of thin white scars across his knuckles told tales of brawls lost and won. She held his hand in hers, rubbing a thumb across the old wounds, and when she looked at him, her gaze was almost tender.

"It's funny," she said quietly. "You were always so impeccably put-together in your uniform. I never knew you were hiding all these scars under all those layers of splendour and adornment."

A spasm of acute anger lanced through him at her words – somehow, he found it so much more unbearable when she tried to be kind and compassionate than when she was furious and raging and heaping upon him scorn and contempt. "There is much you never knew about me, Miss Swann," he said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice. "Much you never bothered to show the slightest interest in learning."

She withdrew her hand at once, her expression instantly guarded and sullen again. "For God's sake, James," she said angrily. "You don't have to be so hostile. I am not your enemy."

"Aren't you?" He considered her, reclining naked against the wall of his room, her hair a wild mess about her face and shoulders, her pale skin flushed still from the exertions of their lovemaking. "You are the siren responsible for my downfall. I'd say you more than qualify."

He found himself relieved, in an odd way, when her face filled once more with the wrath that he found so much easier to stomach than her kindness.

"Is that it, then? It's all my fault that you're a rum-soaked shipwreck who washed ashore on the godforsaken island of Tortuga? You bear no responsibility for your fate at all?"

"Of course I do. I bear all the responsibility, every last miserable ounce," he retorted. "I know perfectly well that I'm to blame for allowing you to influence my duties to even the minutest of degrees. I will not allow myself to be so swayed again."

"Is that what you think I'm doing?" she challenged, her eyes blazing. "Swaying you? To what purpose? What nefarious harms do you imagine I wish to inflict on you, James?"

"I don't know and I don't intend to find out. You've done enough."

"I have apologized to you!" She was shouting now, and it dawned on him that he had never seen her this agitated – not even when she had begged him to rescue her lover on that ill-fated quest to Isla de Muerta. "I do not know how else to make amends! I told you I never intended to hurt you, and I meant it! I did not ruin your life out of spite or malice, whatever you may choose to believe. You were my friend, James, my dear friend! I cared for you!"

Her confessionary outburst threw him wildly off-balance, knocking askance the spear of his white-hot ire, now aimed not at her but at the world beyond. He rose swiftly to his feet, needing to remove himself from her immediate presence, and stalked back to the window where he'd stood this morning, drinking his rum and regarding her in her slumbering repose. He was tugging up his breeches and buttoning them closed when he heard her rise to her feet and advance behind him, her bare feet scarcely audible against the rough wood floor. Her cool, soft hands were a torment to the exposed skin of his back, and he stiffened in response to her touch.

"My God, how did you get these?" she murmured, sliding her hands gently across his shoulders and down his back, and he knew without asking what she referred to; her voice was again full of damnable compassion, and it made him ill. The story behind those scars was not a pleasant one, one he ordinarily would never share with a woman, but he found suddenly that he wanted – no, needed – her to know. If she wanted to be so damned curious, so bloody full of sympathy, then let her know the whole ugly truth behind her romantic ideals of a life at sea.

"I was a midshipman on my first voyage," he said, willing himself not to respond to her feather-light touch. "I was ordered to the mizzenmast watch – it's typically where the new sailors are put, because the work isn't as demanding and there isn't as much to bollocks up. The watch lieutenant was a vicious old bugger named Wexham, and he was notorious for doling out brutal punishments for the most minor of infractions. And God save the man who actually made a serious error on Wexham's watch. Which, of course, is what I did."

He heard her swallow with foreboding, her hands stroking him firmer and with determined purpose. "What happened?" she whispered.

"I failed to adequately secure the rigging. I'd thought I'd tied it properly, but I didn't know my ropes well enough yet, and during a storm, it came loose, whipping across the sails in a right fury. It almost knocked a man overboard, and it took a dozen seamen to tie it down in the midst of the gale. Wexham was furious and demanded to know who'd secured the rigging, and of course, I admitted to my transgression. I knew the punishment would be harsh, but I couldn't abide another man bearing the consequences of my failure." Always the good and honest sailor he'd been, dutiful and loyal and willing to take his lumps. And look, he thought sourly, where it had gotten him.

"Wexham had me strapped to the mast and sentenced me to fifty lashes. I tried to bear it as manfully as I could, but at some point, I lost consciousness from the pain. I remember counting to twenty-six, and then I awoke in the ship's hold with the surgeon pouring a bottle of cheap gin on the raw wounds to prevent infection. Christ's blood, that was the worst agony I've ever known." He heard Elizabeth mew in sympathy, and felt her hands still against him.

"I was told later that the captain stopped Wexham from meting out the entire sentence after I'd gone under. Not that Captain Key's motives were entirely benevolent, mind you – my father was an admiral, you see, and it just wouldn't do if I died on my first posting because of a punishment taken too far," he said mordantly. He turned around then, allowing her hands to slide around him. Her eyes were bright with tears, but her distress, he realized with a curious twinge, did not bring him the satisfaction he'd imagined it would.

"How old were you?" she asked, the revulsion in her voice readily apparent.

"Thirteen."

"My God!" She stared at him in horror. "You were just a child!"

"No," he said ruefully. "There are no children in His Majesty's Navy. Boys become men very quickly, or they don't become men at all."

"That's horrible," she whimpered, and pressed herself against him, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder. He instantly became extremely and painfully aware that she was still naked.

"It is the unvarnished truth, Elizabeth. Life at sea is not the romantic whirlwind of freedom and adventure you seem to imagine. It is terrible food and filthy unwashed men, floggings and drownings and taking a pirate's cutlass to the belly. It is not for the weak or faint of heart."

"Is that what you think I am, James? Weak and faint of heart?" She lifted her head and regarded him with a spark of that inner fire that had so bewitched him all those years ago. "I've been sailing with Wi – with the pirates for years now. I know that it isn't all glamour and romance."

He might have bothered to offer a rejoinder to her claim, but her slip hadn't gone unnoticed. Her near mention of Will Turner's name jerked him violently out of… whatever this reverie had been, and firmly back into the reality of their lives. And the reality was that she had used and abandoned him three years ago with nary a second thought, and was now betrothed to another man. The spell was broken at once, and he slipped out of her arms brusquely, striding purposefully towards the clothes that lay heaped in the corner of his room.

"Here." He tossed her shirt and trousers onto the bed. "But don't expect me to leave the room while you dress, not after you've been parading around in the nude for nigh the past hour."

She regarded him with utter confusion, clearly unaware of what had caused his abrupt change in demeanour. "James – "

"No. Let's not pretend any more, shall we, Elizabeth? You are not going to stay here with me, and I would not have you if you did. You have misplaced Mr. Turner, or don't you recall? I presume you still intend to find him."

Her eyes flashed at his casual mention of Turner; anger at his presumption, most likely, but also something else – guilt? But whatever it was, it was fleeting, and soon she had affixed in place once more the stony mask she wore when she held him aloof and at arm's length. He found a considerable measure of relief that their relationship, such as it was, had returned to familiar ground.

"Very well," she said primly, and began to pull on the awkwardly overlarge men's clothing. "Forgive me for hoping that we could come to some sort of understanding."

"What is there to understand, Elizabeth? You have chosen your life. I have – well, I suppose it would be a lie to assert that I have chosen mine, but it remains my life all the same, and it does not, and can never, include you."

"You certainly were eager for it to include me last night and this morning," she shot back, finally clad again in her shirt and breeches as she tied her hair back into a tight queue.

He couldn't resist a smirk at her smart rejoinder; it was true enough, at any rate. "I only wanted a taste of what might have been mine, my dear. It meant nothing."

She recoiled as if slapped, and opened her mouth to retort furiously, but some force of which he was unaware stayed her, and instead she adopted a curious expression, one he could not read.

"If you insist," she said cryptically, fetching her hat and placing it atop her head. He was utterly puzzled; he'd chosen his words to be deliberately cruel, hoping to at last chase this irksome wench from his room so he could begin forgetting about her posthaste (preferably with a bottle of rum). She'd seemed to take the bait, but withdrawn at the last moment. What a confounding woman Elizabeth Swann could be.

"I do insist," he replied, and cursed silently as he realized that his voice sounded far more irritated than he'd intended. "But nevertheless, I do hope you enjoyed your deflowering. Please pass my regards to Mr. Turner."

She merely shook her head, but her eyes finally registered the disgust he'd hoped to invoke. "You are a complete pig, James Norrington. I still believe you are a good man at heart, but Tortuga has not been kind to you."

"Tortuga is kind to no one, Miss Swann."

She said nothing in reply to that and made to leave, and he thanked all the powers and principalities of the heavens – his skin was crawling, and he badly needed a drink. But before she opened the door, she turned to him once more, and he barely suppressed a groan of anguished impatience.

"Yes?" he snapped.

"Captain Brodie," she said, and whatever irritation he'd been feeling collapsed away, replaced by complete and utter bafflement.

"What? Who is that?"

"He's the captain of the merchant vessel I sailed in on, the _Sagitta_. I believe he's looking to hire on some permanent crew in Tortuga. I heard him speaking about it with the first mate. He mentioned, before I disembarked, that he'd be staying at the Boar's Head if I needed anything, so perhaps you might find him there. I can't imagine he'd turn down someone with as many years of experience on the sea as you."

Whatever he had been expecting her to say, that had not been it, and it showed on his face.

"What… why are you telling me this?" he frowned in bewilderment.

"Because I was wrong," she said. "I told you I didn't know how to make amends for the wrongs I've done you, but that isn't true. I'll talk to Captain Brodie, tell him that you're an experienced seaman." She paused, and her countenance took on a softer cast. "I just hate to see you rotting away in this awful place."

He felt his anger, the savage beast, roar back to life, but – somehow – with less intensity than before.

"I told you I will never accept your pity," he snarled. "Nor will I accept your charity."

"Then accept neither," she retorted. "I've told you where to find Captain Brodie. Speak to him or don't. If you truly wish to drink yourself to death on Tortuga, no one will stop you. But just… think about it. Captain Brodie's ship is a way off this island, a way out." And then she was regarding him with something, some emotion he was certain he couldn't place.

"I don't care if you want to hate me forever, James. But please, just… think about it." And with that, she opened the door and slipped out and was gone without another word.

He did not know how much longer he stood there, looking at the door she'd closed behind her. He absentmindedly tugged his lower lip into his mouth, tasting the coppery tang of his blood and running his tongue along the swollen skin where she had pierced him with her teeth. He shook himself out of his reverie and began to pull on the rest of his clothes. When he was dressed, he heaved a great sigh and ran a shaking, unsteady hand along his unshaven jaw. Perhaps… perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was time to find a way off of this accursed island and get back to the sea. Where he belonged.

But not before he had a drink – his hands were beginning to tremble, and that always meant it had been too long. Shaking his head like a dog to clear away the perplexing emotions that besieged him, he waited until he was certain enough time had passed for her to have left the Mermaid's Tail, then opened the door and went downstairs to acquire a bottle of Crusty's best rum.


	5. New Beginnings, Old Farewells

James took a long, final swig of the bottle of rum and tossed it aside into an alley as he threaded his way through the grimy, crowded streets of Tortuga towards the Boar's Head. He'd nearly talked himself out of going at least ten times now; partly out of a desire to remain firmly planted on a barstool in Crusty's tavern, but mostly out of stubborn resentment against accepting anything resembling assistance from Elizabeth Swann. He'd hoped that the bottle with which he'd just fortified himself would have helped him put her out of mind, but so far it hadn't worked – instead, thoughts of her tormented him more than ever, thoughts of her soft pale skin beneath his hands and her red lips pressed against his and her tight, hot center clenching around him as he moved in her –

He swore angrily to himself, frustrated at his inability to bring his wandering thoughts to bear. Heaving a ragged sigh, he ran a distracted hand over his face, scratching at the bearded stubble there. He'd thought briefly about shaving before meeting this Captain Brodie fellow, but decided against it; wielding a straight razor in the vicinity of his throat while inebriated to any degree was probably a bad idea. He blamed the bottle of rum on her, on the need to purge her from his mind (ignoring the unpleasantly persistent voice that reminded him that he couldn't remember the last day he hadn't started off with a drink, Elizabeth Swann or no), and if this Brodie had a problem with it, well then, sod the old bastard, anyway. He shouldn't be looking for crew on Tortuga if he wasn't willing to hire a few drunkards.

And if James were honest with himself, he wasn't even certain he wanted Brodie to hire him on at all – he was far from certain, actually. It wasn't that he preferred Tortuga – God forbid, the place was the most miserable pisshole he'd ever been –and he did want, very badly, to return to the sea. But maybe Crusty hadn't been wrong in what he'd said the day before – James was finding that Tortuga fit him more and more with each passing day, as if he'd been here all along, as if he'd never been that other man at all.

_And that's why you need to get the hell off this island, before you are no longer suited for anything else._

Shaking the obnoxious nattering voice out of his head, he rounded the corner, stepping gingerly around a fellow who lay splayed out and snoring loudly in the middle of the street and resisting the sudden and malicious urge to give the man a good kick in the ribs. The Boar's Head was one of the more respectable inns on Tortuga, if any such establishment on the wretched island could be so considered, and accordingly it was located along the cleanest thoroughfare in the port – which meant that there was marginally less filth and squalor than along most of the other streets. James stopped just shy of the door, his nagging doubts renewed as he stood before the threshold, knowing somehow that once he'd crossed the portal there would be no going back. He could not say he enjoyed his life, but he had gotten used to it. And that, he supposed, was the whole of the problem.

His musings were abruptly terminated when he was shoved violently forward, his shoulder slamming against the door to the tavern.

"Oi, bugger, get in or get outta the way!" A squat, grubby miscreant with blackened teeth and a garish golden earring stood with his chest puffed out in a clear display of dominance. James turned to regard the man lazily and with an equal measure of perturbation and disgust.

"I said, if you ain't goin' in, then get outta my – " The pirate's words choked off into a startled bleat as James wrapped a tight fist around the man's kerchief and pulled him in close, his muscles flexing against the leaden weight of the man's oversized bulk. Without a word, James half-dragged, half-hurled him through the open door, and the man sailed into the Boar's Head and crashed to the floor in a thunderous din. The tavern quieted for a moment, the patrons peering across the room at the fat man sprawled gracelessly across the floor, before the disturbance was forgotten and the men resumed their drinking.

James stepped into the tavern with a desultory air, eyeing the heap of pirate on the floor before him with a languid indifference. The man was fuming and stammering, incoherent curses sputtering forth from his mouth in a jumbled stream as he rolled over in a clumsy attempt to right himself – an attempt that was stopped cold by James's booted foot planted firmly on his chest.

"You wanted in, didn't you? Well, here you are." He pressed his boot down hard on the pirate's chest until the man was wheezing for air. "Now get up and get your drink and leave me be, or your pride will be the least of what ails you." He lifted his foot then and nudged the man, not gently, shoving him over and away. James turned then to the rest of the tavern, noticed more than a few faces regarding him with a mixture of suspicion, distrust, and approval, and decided that would do for an entrance.

Sidling up to the bar, he debated buying a bottle of rum, but in truth, he was still enjoying the pleasant aftereffects of the bottle he'd gotten from Crusty. And he wasn't there (much as he was loath to admit it) to drink, anyway. The barkeep meandered over, fixing James with a flat, expectant gaze.

"I'm here to see a Captain Brodie. I've heard he's hiring on hands," James said.

The barkeep grunted and nodded towards the far distant corner of the bar. "Aye, Cap'n Brodie be over there. Don't suppose you'll be buyin' a drink, then?" But James was already gone, making his way through the crowded tavern towards the dim corner where Brodie waited. James could make out no one man distinctly through the crowd, and as he threaded his way through the mob of men, he bumped into a slight man sitting slumped over at a table, head hung low and moaning disconsolately into his mug of ale.

"Ay, mind where you're goin'! This ale is me last po- pos- possess – thing I got in the world!" It was Simple Pete, his voice morose and forlorn as he wailed into his beer. He looked up from his beer and did a start as he recognized James looming over him.

"You! You – you – you robbed me!" Pete wailed. "I ain't got nothin' left and it's coz of you!"

"You've got your life, haven't you?" James growled. "Which is more than your friends can say. Perhaps you should learn to keep better company." Stifling a curse of irritation, he brushed past before Pete could reply, wending his way past a throng of tavern-goers who stood clustered near a table tucked against the back wall of the Boar's Head.

The men appeared dispirited, and James could overhear snippets of their conversation as he walked by: "Thinks he's too good for the likes of us, does he?" and "Well, bugger him and bugger his ship, anyway – it's probably a rotten old rubbish barge," and other similar sentiments floated past his ears. So – Brodie was a demanding captain who ran a tight ship, then? The part of James who was a lifelong sailor, who'd climbed so determinedly and skilfully through the officer's ranks of the Royal Navy, was assuaged; but the part of James who was a drifting fragment of drunken Tortuga flotsam, who was even now more inebriated than he'd care to admit, wondered if he hadn't at last fallen into that category of lowly men who were too bedraggled and disgraceful to crew even a modest merchant vessel.

"Well now, laddie, don't look so sore. I hafta say you look a right sight better than most of these sorry flea-bitten bilge rats callin' themselves sailors. Why, you look like you even know how to tie a knot or two."

The not-quite-mocking words, delivered in a thick but lilting Scottish brogue, caught James's ear, and he noticed then the lanky man who leaned against the back wall of the tavern, one booted leg propped casually against the wall behind him.

"Captain Brodie, I presume?"

"Aye, the very same," Brodie said, lips creasing in a thin smile as he unfurled himself, cat-like, from his perch against the wall. He was nearly as tall as James, but where James was broad and strapping, Brodie was whip-thin and slender, though he moved with a lithe grace that bespoke a not-inconsiderable strength. His face was as long and narrow as the rest of him, capped by short-shorn black hair that culminated in a widow's peak just over his forehead. His eyes were small and dark and cunning and they regarded James with an enigmatic yet undeniably amused expression.

"Well, I'm certainly glad I seem to have made a favourable impression," James drawled sardonically.

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far yet, my good sir. Though I do admire of the way you handled that ruffian at the door. Clean and simple, without an excess of violence. It shows you know how to handle yourself, but you also know the value of restraint. Good qualities in any seaman, I've found." Brodie's close-set eyes continued to appraise James, who had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that he was being regarded as a piece of chattel at a marketplace.

"You certainly seem eager enough to dole out praise to a man who has yet to make a favourable impression upon you," James noted dryly.

"You'll find that my favour is extraordinarily difficult to earn, Mister…"

James hesitated only a moment, as he always did before giving his name. He'd had pirates swing fists at him or draw blades on him the moment they realized he was the dread Commodore Norrington, the Scourge of Piracy. Or had been, at any rate. Now, he was just another drunken, down-on-his-luck sailor who couldn't even manage to truly impress a middling merchant captain. He felt an oddly irate sense of pride suffuse him, and he met Brodie's shrewd gaze resolutely with his own.

"Norrington," he said. "James Norrington."

"Ah yes, Mr. Norrington! You're the one the lass told me of. What a comely thing she was!" Brodie's eyes, at last unguarded, twinkled in bawdy delight. "And what a lucky man you are, I might add. A bonny lass such as she, and so spirited to boot! Sang your praises to the heavens, she did."

James suppressed a sudden and intense urge to grab Brodie's head between his hands and smash it savagely and repeatedly into the wall of the tavern. "Did she now," he grated, feeling his jaw muscles twitch in agitation.

The twinkle in Brodie's eyes faltered every so slightly as he cocked a curious eyebrow. "Or perhaps I've misjudged your… acquaintance… with – Miss Swann, was it? In that case, my sincerest apologies." James could not decide if Brodie's words were offered as sincere condolence or gentle mockery, but it scarcely mattered, as the mere allusion to Elizabeth Swann had set his hands trembling with an excitability that he was not sure whether to attribute to vexation, lust, or resentment at her sheer effrontery.

"My personal affairs are none of your business," James said brusquely, unwilling to discuss his – could it even be called a _relationship_? – with Elizabeth Swann with anyone else, let alone a curiously chirpy Scottish trader who was taking far too much amusement in his discomfort. His teeth itched and he longed desperately for a drink.

"Aye, so they're not," Brodie affirmed, his eyes nevertheless narrowing at James's rebuke. "But your proclivity for rum – now that is my concern." He raised a hand to forestall James's objection. "Don't bother t'argue with me, lad – I can spot a rum hound a mile away, and besides, you smell like you've already been drowning your sorrows this very morning." James scowled at Brodie's suddenly severe countenance, smothering yet another impulse to haul off and sock the man in the mouth.

"The _Sagitta_ is the finest merchant brig in the Caribbean and I run her tight and ship-shape. That means no drunkards lollygagging about the deck, or pitching themselves off the sides, and certainly no rum-besotted tipplers making a muck of things. I trust I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly," James said, his voice tight and clipped. "Now allow me to make something clear to _you_. I am a better sailor when I am falling over drunk than most men are sober. I could tie any knot or rig any mast blind and without a moment's hesitation. I have sailed a man-o'-war through the Spanish Main in a raging gale and lost not a single soul." The sudden, painful memory of the hurricane off Tripoli came to him then with a renewed fury, but he forged on. "I am a lifelong seaman with experience and discipline to spare. But if you'd care to hire one of these other slack-jawed miscreants who can barely button their trousers in the morning, then by all means. For if you meant to hire a sober sailor, you certainly called on the wrong port."

Brodie stared hard at James, clearly unused to being censured so boldly. "Now those don't sound like the words of a man desperate for work, do they? They sound like the words of a man with something to prove. I don't have any room for troublemakers on my ship, Norrington."

"Whatever trouble there may be on your ship won't be on my account, Captain," James said tersely. "You want experienced crew. I have experience in spades. Hire me or don't, but I have no time for these petty games."

"No time?" Brodie was suddenly amused once more. "And from which pressing appointments am I keeping you, Mr. Norrington? Another date with the bottle?" He waved his hand in amusement, cutting off James mid-growl. "Oh, calm yourself, mate. You've the right of it, after all – I hardly expected to find a sober sailor in Tortuga, did I?"

"Then I'm glad we understand each other," James grated, wishing he hadn't turned down that drink earlier.

"Do we? I suppose that remains to be seen," Brodie said cryptically. "But no matter. 'Tisn't much to understand, after all. Whoever you are or whatever you might have been in the past, you are not the captain of the _Sagitta_. I am, and my word is law. Do you understand, Mr. Norrington?"

"Perfectly," James said, less combatively this time. "I am fit for any duty aboard ship and willing to serve at your pleasure… Captain."

If Brodie detected any insolence in James's tone, he gave no indication. "Then I have a space on my ship for you, Mr. Norrington," Brodie said, smiling thinly as he reached out to grasp James's forearm in a comradely squeeze. "You'll just need to sign your name to the ship's manifest here." He withdrew from an inner pocket of his burgundy greatcoat a sheaf of paper, from which he took a large scroll and smoothed it out flat on the table before them. He motioned to a man whom James hadn't previously noticed standing discreetly in the corner of the tavern, who brought a quill and inkwell over to the table.

"A few administrative details, as it were," Brodie said as James took the quill and regarded the manifest. The _Sagitta_ apparently was manned by twenty-three other crewmen, if the signatures on the scroll were a current muster; a blank space beneath the twenty-third name awaited his signature.

"First, you'll get paid a cut of whatever business we do, the crew's share being split equally amongst the lot of you," Brodie said. "You'll get paid as soon as I make an accounting of our bounty. Second, you can play lots, drink your rum, and misbehave to your heart's delight in your berth after hours, but you will be ship-shape and ready to perform any and all duties required of you when you're above deck. If you're unfit for duty I'll have you flogged and left at the next port of call. If you think you can manage all that, then welcome aboard the _Sagitta_."

James stared at the manifest, feeling the weight of the moment bearing down on him. As hardscrabble as his life was on Tortuga, he had to admit that he enjoyed answering to no master, indulging in no one's business but his own. Of course, that business had largely consisted of eking out a pittance with which to purchase liquor and whores, and there was only one end to that particular road. That, in the end, made his decision rather simple.

"I think I can manage," James said levelly, meeting Brodie's eyes as he signed his name to the manifest with a bold, scrawling flourish.

"I certainly hope so," Brodie said, still smiling that thin enigmatic smile. "Welcome to the crew, Mr. Norrington. We cast off at dawn."

* * *

"I never thought I'd say it, but it'll be a shame to see you go, Norrington," Crusty said ruefully as he passed James yet another bottle. "Got used to seeing you around, I suppose. And your coin was regular enough, as coin goes on this pisshole island."

"You're a man of exquisitely tender sentiment, Crusty. You just might bring a tear to my eye." James took a hearty swig of the bottle as he returned to the raven-haired beauty who batted her eyes coquettishly at him from her perch atop the table. She slid eagerly into his lap as he sat down, and he groaned in delight as his face came level with her generous bosom, which threatened to spill out of her too-tight bodice.

"Got a drop for me, handsome?" The whore – Josephine, he recalled dimly – accepted the rum gratefully as James busied himself with the intricate lace. He'd learned early that it was best to promptly take care of any tasks that required manual dexterity before the rum too thoroughly fogged his mind. He'd made the mistake once of failing to unlace a wench's bodice before the liquor and lust had set in, and the next morning, the whore had been livid that he'd ripped her best dress. He'd had to avoid the Blushing Virgin (the most inappropriately named brothel in the whole of the world, or so James was convinced) for a good several months after that.

"Oi, you rascal, remember you've got a room! At least for one more night," Crusty groused from the bar as James eagerly buried his face in Josephine's ample breasts. "If you're going to start carrying on, take it upstairs."

"Oh, Crusty, you're no fun at all," Josephine giggled as James slipped a hand under her loose bodice and pinched a rosy nipple.

"It's quite all right, my dear – I do believe I'm ready to retire," James growled lustily, trailing a path of kisses from her bosom to her neck. He slid Josephine off his lap and stood unsteadily, the bottle in one hand and the whore's hand in his other, and began to make his way along the well-trod path between the tavern and his small dingy room.

He reflected, later, as he lay sated and sweaty and entangled with the wench in his bed, that he would miss his shabby little room, in a way. It had been his home, such as it were, for three years. It had been his refuge from the griefs of life, the place where he sought desperate comfort in a cold world with other lonely lost souls and countless bottles of rum. And – fittingly, perhaps, one of the last memories he'd have of the place – it had been where he'd taken Elizabeth Swann's maidenhood, had felt her raw desire for him, and in that found a measure of vindication for her cruel rejection all those years ago.

"God above, why can't I get that siren out of my head?" He turned over fitfully, disentangling himself from the whore as visions of Elizabeth Swann gasping and writhing beneath him consumed him once more. He could see her even now, naked and ready for him, begging him to take her, wrapping herself in his sheets, pinned against his wall, hands tenderly caressing his body, mapping his scars, showing more concern for him than she ever had before, than any of his innumerable Tortugan whores ever had –

"Handsome? What's wrong?" Josephine's hands slid around his chest, stilling his restless movements. "You having a bad dream, love?"

The heat of her touch against his skin renewed his desire, and he decided he would try to expunge Elizabeth Swann from his thoughts the same way he had for the past three years.

"Nothing you can't put out of my mind," he murmured, rolling over atop her and seizing her lips in a rough kiss.

It was, of course, a lie, and even as he fucked her, he could no longer convince himself that he was not once again imagining Elizabeth in her place. When he came in her, he rolled over at once, out of her embrace, and stared hard at the window into the darkness outside, ignoring the whore's indignant whimper. When dawn came, he would be out the door and out of this room forever, and maybe – finally – he'd put all of this god-damned mess behind him for good.

* * *

**Author's Note: Whew - I apologize for such a long wait! Since I posted the last chapter, I have finished university for the summer, gone home, and moved to a new city for a summer job, with several travel pit stops and vacations in between. I've just now gotten settled in for the summer and finally got the chance to finish this long-suffering chapter, and updates should be coming much more regularly over the next couple of months. If you are reading along, please drop me a review - I'd love to read any feedback! Thanks for reading, all!  
**


	6. Welcome Aboard

James stood at the window of his tiny room for the last time, looking out into the indigo of the predawn Caribbean sky as he shrugged his coat over his shoulders. Downing the last of the rum from the bottle, he turned to regard the whore, who slumbered soundly, unabashedly nude and sprawled across his bed on top of the covers. She would wake well after dawn, he imagined; at any rate, the room was Crusty's once more, and if the gnarly old barkeeper didn't mind one of his whores languishing the morning away in the tiny tavern room, well then, it certainly wasn't his problem. He would be long gone, sailing away from the wretched port of Tortuga for the first time in many long months.

Minutes later, he walked out of the door of the Mermaid's Tail, sparing the briefest of backwards glances for the tavern that had so reliably supplied him with the rum and the whores that had made his bleak existence marginally more endurable. Shaking his head to clear away the malaise, James reminded himself that he would be out on the open sea in just hours, out where he belonged. Feeling a sense of purpose for the first time in recent memory, he hastened his pace toward the harbour where the tall-masted merchant ships were berthed at the dock.

The sight of ships in a harbour never failed to lift his spirits. The masts soaring skyward, latticed by the intricate network of rigging that secured the sails, waiting for their chance to unfurl in the wind of the open seas; the polished hulls, gleaming in the sun; the intricately carved figureheads jutting forth from the prows, directing their charges forward across the waves and serving as a totem to appease the fickle whimsy of the sea spirits. Yes, the sight of a ship in full splendour always set his heart to racing, as it did now as he approached the line of ships docked at Tortuga's harbour. Some of the ships, to be sure, were shabby and in poor repair, a sight which had never failed to stir ire within him, even when he was deep-mired in drunken misery. A poorly maintained ship was a sure sign of a poor captain, and as James traversed the briny, half-rotted wooden planks of the dock, he felt a shiver of apprehension. What if the _Sagitta_ was such a vessel, despite all of Brodie's bluster that he was a rigorous and exacting captain who kept a tight ship?

But, as it turned out, his dread was entirely unfounded. The _Sagitta_ rose before him in the early morning mist, and James felt a thrill as he beheld her stately beauty. She was a sleek brig, two-masted, long but narrow; her hull painted an inky black that was visible even in the dim predawn light. She was without a doubt the finest ship he'd sailed on since his days in the Royal Navy.

"She's a real beauty, ain't she? Fast as the arrow she's named for, to boot."

The voice – a thickly-accented Yorkshire drawl – did not belong to Brodie, and James turned from his admiration of the ship to behold a sturdily-built, tawny-haired, ruddy-faced man, who thrust a beefy hand in his direction.

"Name's Tom Riggins," the man said as James grasped his hand in salutation. "I'm the quartermaster and the master gunner aboard the _Sagitta_. Double duty, but the cap'n trusts me with it, I suppose. You must be one of the new hires."

"James Norrington," he said. "Though I am compelled to ask – what use has a merchant vessel for a master gunner?"

"Ah," Riggins said, his friendly face creasing into a grin. "Well now, it's no secret there's more pirates roamin' these waters than a man can count. The cap'n believes the best defence is a good offence, so to speak."

"I see," James said, eyeing the _Sagitta_ favourably. "She certainly would be a capital prize for any band of villains."

"Aye, that she would," Riggins agreed heartily. "So you see the necessity of protectin' her. Can't rely on the damned Navy, that's for sure. Always there whenever you don't want to be bothered and never there when you do."

James stiffened involuntary in umbrage, though he said nothing – the Navy and its reputation were, after all, no longer his concern. But his movement did not go unnoticed by Riggins, who half-winced in apology.

"Ah, you used to be in the Navy, did you? Well, I meant no disrespect, Mr. Norrington. There's plenty of good men what've been in the Navy. I've known a few in my time. Good sailors, every one of 'em."

"You needn't apologize," James said crisply. "I've not been in His Majesty's service for some time. Hence why I am here."

"Of course, sure," Riggins said hurriedly. "Well, that's your business, I reckon. I won't pry." James was about to sardonically thank him for his courtesy, but Riggins suddenly started, as though abruptly aware of a pressing matter.

"And here I am gossiping like an old woman at the market, and the sun's just about come up," Riggins said. "Well, come on then, let's get you aboard. The captain'll have kittens if we're not on board and squared away by dawn. Big on punctuality, he is."

James followed Riggins up the gangway and felt a weight lift from his chest as he set foot for the first time on the deck of the _Sagitta_. It had truly happened, at last – he'd escaped from the self-made hell he'd created for himself on Tortuga. But, he reminded himself sternly, fortune could never be taken for granted, especially at sea. Today's boon could turn into tomorrow's bane as quick as the winds could turn a sunny day into a deadly gale. It was a piece of wisdom James was determined never to forget, as he once had, when he had allowed his rank and his skill to blind him to danger and to the fickle nature of fate, which took no greater pleasure than in laying low a man who had succumbed to hubris, that deadliest of all faults.

The crew had gathered around the quarterdeck at the direction of Riggins and a huge, lumbering bald man James assumed was the boatswain, and James tried to take a measure of them as they stood to varying states of attention. Some faces were open and friendly, and returned his gaze with a fleeting smile or nod of greeting; others were stoic or stern and stared resolutely forward at the quarterdeck where Brodie would no doubt be soon appearing to address the men before they cast off for ports unknown. Upon sighting a familiar face in the crowd, James looked away quickly before the other man could catch his gaze, and he turned his face back to the quarterdeck in time to see Brodie striding purposely across the opposite side of the deck, bounding onto the quarterdeck with a agile confidence. Brodie, James reflected wryly, was quite the showman.

Indeed, the Scottish captain was dressed impeccably and with resplendence, no doubt with the intention of making a gallant impression upon his new crew. Brodie again sported the burgundy greatcoat James recalled from the Boar's Head, its length flapping impressively behind him. Frilled sleeves protruded from the arms of the coat, framing Brodie's long, nimble hands, and dark brown breeches disappeared into a pair of knee-length black leather boots that must have cost more coin than James had seen in a year. James could not help but recall the dilettantish pomp of some of the pirates he had had the misfortune to know – all the Scot was missing was a cocked and feathered tricorn topped with a great gaudy plume, like that ridiculous hat Turner had worn on the day he'd ruined James's life and stolen his fiancé out from under his nose.

A thunderously ill mood beset James at the thought, and he wondered if he would ever cease this vexing habit of bringing _her_ to mind at the most inopportune times. As always, the merest consideration of her made him ache for a drink, and he clenched his fists with agitated distraction, wishing now he'd had the presence of mind to buy a few spare bottles of Crusty's finest to stow away for the journey.

Fortunately, Brodie chose that moment to begin his welcome to the crew, and James was able to subsume thoughts of _her_ beneath the surface as he focused on the Scot's thick brogue.

"A good morning and welcome aboard to all of you!" Brodie shouted, his voice at once commanding and congenial. "You've all met me, but in case you were too deep into your cups and forgot, I'll introduce myself again." Brodie's eyes flickered at James for the merest moment, filled with an impish mirth, and James clenched his jaw in annoyance.

"I'm Captain Andrew Brodie, and this beautiful lady on which you are all currently privileged to sail is my ship, the _Sagitta_. I'd say she was my one and only, but my wife might take a wee bit of exception to such a bold claim." A few nervous, obligatory titters arose from the crew, but James's was not among them. He was puzzled more than amused at the thought of a man like Brodie having a wife – he'd seemed to be a man who had little time for anything besides his life as a merchant mariner. Not, James reflected, that he was the most astute judge of character. He'd learned _that_ lesson the hard way.

"You already know what's expected of you. Do your job, do it well, and don't make trouble or bollocks anything up. I've no time for scoundrels, layabouts, troublemakers, or bumblers, and if you're any of the above you'll be left at the next port along with whatever punishment might suit your transgressions." He paused dramatically, letting the solemnity of the threat sink into the men's heads. "If you're none of those things, then we'll get along just fine. You can spend your time ashore as you see fit, but if you run afoul of the law, don't expect me to vouch for your sterling character."

Another smattering of forced laughter followed, and Brodie smiled indulgently in the manner of a schoolmaster regarding his group of wayward young charges. "So that's everything, I reckon. There are two other men you all need to know aboard this vessel: Mr. Riggins, the quartermaster, will have your work detail assigned to you, so speak to him as soon as you're dismissed. And Mr. Kurtz –" he gestured at the hulking shaven-headed behemoth – "is the ship's boatswain, so try to stay on his good side." More laughter, though James noted that Kurtz, who stood stony-faced and immobile as a statue, did not crack even the barest hint of a smile. He was not surprised; captains prided themselves on selecting the most intimidating boatswain possible, since the boatswain was typically in charge of administering punishment aboard ship, and it appeared Brodie was no different. James got the distinct impression that Kurtz enjoyed indulging in the opportunity to mete out a brutal flogging, and made a mental note to avoid doing anything that might draw the ire of Brodie or his fearsome boatswain.

"As soon as you men take up your places, we'll drop anchor and sail for Port-au-Prince," Brodie declared, and James jerked his head sharply up in surprise – a motion that did not go unnoticed by the captain.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Norrington, is there a problem?" Brodie said smoothly. James felt the cold eyes of Kurtz staring daggers at him, and he felt a shiver of trepidation despite himself. Surely a man could not be flogged for being surprised at the news that they – a vessel comprised almost entirely of British sailors – were headed for a French port?

"I was merely unaware that Saint-Domingue was open to English traders, Captain," James said smoothly. It was, after all, the source of his surprise – and if Brodie wanted him to be scraping and deferential, well, he could play that game. He'd spent enough time as a midshipman and a lieutenant to know how to handle irascible commanding officers.

"Well, I'm not an Englishman, now am I, Mr. Norrington," Brodie said with a wry twist of his lips, and James could detect an undercurrent of steel to the jesting words. Bloody Scots and their bloody national pride.

"But your point is well taken," Brodie then said magnanimously, leaving James to wonder again at the mercurial nature of this puzzling man. "You are, of course, correct in that it is rare for a ship flying British colours to make a French port, given the animosities that exist between our people. But I have trading contacts at Port-au-Prince who are well satisfied with the goods I bring them, and those contacts just happen to have very powerful friends who are willing to overlook the national origin of the _Sagitta_ and her crew. Does that satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Norrington?"

It did not, as a matter of fact; in truth, it had only whetted his interest. But he nodded firmly and replied, "Of course, Captain."

"Good!" Brodie clapped his hands. "Well, that settles it, then. You greenhorns go see Mr. Riggins for your work detail, and the rest of you old sea dogs, you know what your job is, so get to it!" The men were just about to disperse, a handful of crew turning to find Riggins, when Brodie suddenly turned back to the crew, his eyes drawing level with James.

"Mr. Norrington." Brodie regarded him with an inscrutable expression. "I would see you in my stateroom after you've spoken to Mr. Riggins. I expect you there in half an hour sharp." With no further explanation, he strode from the quarterdeck and made his way below the quarterdeck.

But James had no time to ponder what Brodie could possibly want of him; he joined the queue of men who were receiving their assignments from Riggins, keeping his head down and avoiding meeting the gazes of any of the other new sailors. He was not in the mood for friendly conversation at the moment.

"You! You again, turnin' up like a bad penny! You better not steal my coin again, no sir!"

He was _certainly_ not in the mood for this. Turning with a groan, he met the dim-yet-indignant glare of Simple Pete with an exasperated defiance.

"Oh, for the love of God, you great idiot! Another word about your godforsaken coin – "

"Well now, settle down, Mr. Norrington. The man can't help being a bit slow," Riggins said calmly, and James turned to see that the rest of the new men had received their assignments, scurrying off to their duties aboard ship and leaving only he and Simple Pete. "Mister, er, Pete – you shouldn't be so harsh with Mr. Norrington, now. You know it was his word with the skipper what got you your job here, don't you?"

Simple Pete gawped in surprise and astonishment, and James felt a great annoyance at Riggins and his big friendly blabbermouth – he'd had no intention of telling Pete that, after signing his own name to the manifest, he'd recommended Brodie hire the simpleton for deck-swabbing duties. He still didn't know what had inspired him, whether it had been guilt, concern, or merely a desire to see a familiar face from his time in Tortuga, however vacant and cow-like that face might be. But he'd certainly never had any intention of letting Pete know the identity of his benefactor, and now Riggins had gone and ruined it all.

"You got me on? You did me a good turn? I – I – I didn't think you had it in you, Norrington!" Pete gazed at him adoringly, through new eyes, and James wanted to bury his face in his palms. Now Pete would follow him around as he'd followed Bill Hardy, trailing at his heels like a loyal puppy. It was the last thing James wanted, and he shot a glare at the obliviously grinning Riggins.

"Looks like you've got a new friend, Mr. Norrington," Riggins said, eyes twinkling. Damn the man, he knew exactly what he'd done, and James heaved a sigh as he resigned himself to the inevitable. Pete continued gawping at him in astonishment, until Riggins informed him that he was to begin swabbing the poop deck at once. James shooed him away and Pete ambled off towards the poop deck, grinning stupidly over his shoulder at James all the while.

"I hope you know what you've done," James groused as Riggins grinned boyishly. "I'll never be rid of the blighter now. I should've realized no good deed goes unpunished."

"Oh, now, don't be that way, Mr. Norrington. Pete don't seem a bad sort. A bit simple, to be sure, but – well, it's good to have friends, isn't it?"

Friends. James hadn't had a friend in longer than he could remember. He felt the bitterness swelling up within him, but something about the benevolence of Riggins' wide smile stayed the caustic words at the tip of his tongue. Riggins, for his part, seemed to detect James's inner tumult, and wisely dropped the topic.

"Well, Mr. Norrington, the cap'n tells me you're an experienced sailor, so I'll put you on the main mast. You'll answer to me and Kurtz only; well, and the cap'n, of course. He seems to think you can be trusted without much supervision." James nodded curtly. After his dreadful flogging at the hands of Lieutenant Wexham in his youth, he'd never made a mistake performing ship's duties, not even a small one. Not until the hurricane, at any rate.

"I will perform any task you put to me and perform it ably, Mr. Riggins," he said, shaking away the bad memories.

Riggins grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "I don't doubt it, Mr. Norrington. But you'd better go see the cap'n, since he asked for you specifically and all. He's not a man to be kept waiting."

* * *

"So tell me, Mr. Norrington," Brodie said as he poured a measure of whisky from a glass decanter into two relatively-clean glasses, "whether you've had the privilege of tasting the water of life?"

James sat in the captain's stateroom, and it was unlike any stateroom he'd ever been in before, even his own back when he'd commanded the _Dauntless_. The small but cozy room was filled with all manner of esoterica and bric-a-brac – small marble friezes of indeterminate, possibly Greek, origin; framed curio cases filled with exotic insects, spread and pinned for display; a variety of jewellery and trinkets crafted from a rainbow's variety of fine metals and gemstones.

"The water of life?" James queried, picking up his glass. The aroma of it wafted up to him, a warm and intoxicating blend of peat and wood, mixed with spices.

"Typical provincial Englishman," Brodie scoffed, picking up the glass and casting a wryly amused look at James. "You poor sods are so besotted with your rotgut gin and rum that you can't even appreciate a truly fine spirit when it is presented before you."

"You mean whisky, then."

"Ah," Brodie said, crooking a finger, eyes glinting with merriment. "Not just any whisky, my friend. Scottish whisky. The finest of all libations ever distilled by any man. Go on, my good sir. Try it and tell me I'm wrong. But I should warn you – your rum will be a sore disappointment to your palate once you've tasted a single malt whisky from the highlands of Inverness-shire."

James obliged his captain and took a sip of the potent liquor. It burned on the way down, much more than the sweet sugarcane of the rum did, but the finish was a complex mixture of flavours, strongly reminiscent of the peat and smoke and wood he'd sensed before imbibing. It was, he imagined, as if he'd just swallowed the very essence of Scotland.

"Incredible, isn't it? But I'm sad to say I've likely ruined you for other refreshments, now. It's a disappointment many an Englishman has experienced after visiting our fair land."

"It is certainly… robust," James allowed, swallowing another drop of the whisky. "Much harsher to drink than rum, I must confess."

"Oh, you've been spoiled by the West Indies," Brodie waved a hand dismissively. "This land will be the ruination of a once-proud people, Mr. Norrington. You mark my words." He emphasized his point with a tilt of his glass before taking a hearty swallow of scotch.

"With all due respect, Captain Brodie, I assume you didn't summon me to your stateroom to treat me to a whisky tasting." James swirled the amber liquid around in his glass, knowing his words were dancing on the line of insolence. But he was growing weary of the constant verbal sparring the captain seemed determined to engage in and hoped to spur Brodie to cut to the heart of whatever matter he wished to discuss.

"With equal respect, Mr. Norrington, perhaps that is exactly why I summoned you." Evidently, James thought ruefully as Brodie grinned at him wolfishly over his glass, the Scottish captain would cease with his word games when he was good and ready.

"Well," Brodie said at last, after James had held his gaze with a level neutrality for several moments and offered no parry to the captain's latest quip, "I see you're not one for small talk. That must have made the privileges of your rank quite tedious indeed, Commodore."

James stiffened as he'd done earlier when Riggins had mentioned the Navy, wondering if he would always have this reaction to any reminders of his once-illustrious career. He was inclined, at first, to ask how Brodie had known of his history, but if Elizabeth hadn't told him, then he surely would have heard it from any bar hound in Tortuga, most of whom took delight in telling the story of the once-proud officer's shame.

"The politics were always a drudgery," James affirmed, deciding to stay on safe ground as he took another sip of scotch.

"And the politics were your downfall in the end, weren't they?" Brodie affixed James with a penetrating gaze. So Brodie was going to confront him directly about it, then. James realized he'd never truly discussed the affair with anyone – after he'd been forced to resign his commission, he'd packed his bags and purchased fare on the first ship leaving Port Royal. A ship that had just happened to be sailing for Tortuga.

James contemplated his whisky, staring into the amber pool as if it were an oracle which would grant him the absolution he sought.

"I was tasked with tracking down and apprehending a notorious pirate who had made an appearance in Port Royal," he began. "I had a chance to end it all, to capture and hang the pirate myself, but I… showed mercy. And so I was sent to chase him about the seven seas, playing catch-up all the while." James sighed, remembered his promise to _her_, to give Sparrow and his new little tagalong, that whelp Turner, a day's head start. Because she had asked him to, because she had looked at him with those large brown eyes, batted her eyelashes at him mercilessly, and begged him to spare the pirate and the man whom she declared she had, in truth, loved all along. The recollection of her betrayal filled him with bile.

"I chased them all the way to Tripoli, and had nearly caught up with them, when a storm began to brew. I've weathered many more storms than I can remember at sea, and this one seemed no different, so I sent my ship forward to pursue the pirate. But before long it became apparent that I'd sent my ship into the midst of a hurricane. We sailed straight into the shearing winds and the waves broke the ship apart like a child's toy." He started resolutely into the whisky glass, unwilling to look at the man across the table. The memories were a curse that he knew would haunt him until his dying day.

"Most of the men aboard died. There were fourteen survivors, of which I was, of course, one. I was immediately blamed by the admiralty for not having the good sense to die with my ship as a captain is meant to do. And, of course, they were looking for a scapegoat to blame for the Navy's continued inability to capture Jack bloody Sparrow. I was as good a one as any, since it was, after all, my fault that he didn't hang from the gallows in Port Royal." He drained the rest of the whisky in one gulp, grimacing as the fire coursed its way down his throat, and set the glass on the table with a definitive clink.

"So there you have it. The story of my disgrace and how I came to be a drunkard on Tortuga. Are you certain you still wish to have me aboard your ship, Captain Brodie?" James, at last, lifted his gaze to meet Brodie's, whose expression was hidden beneath the already-familiar mask of inscrutability.

Brodie took a lingering sip of his scotch, the mask never wavering. At last, he set down his glass and regarded James with a piercing stare.

"Every man makes mistakes, Mr. Norrington. What matters is what he does with the lessons they teach him." He pulled out the decanter again, eyebrows quirking in a silent question. James nodded and pushed his glass towards Brodie, who filled it with more whisky.

"So yes, Mr. Norrington, I am certain I still want you aboard my ship. A man of your experience is not to be taken lightly by any veteran sailor, and I have no particular aversion to your reputation as the so-called 'Scourge of Piracy,' nor to your subsequent fall from grace. The affairs of His Majesty's Royal Navy and its imperial ambitions are of little concern to me, as are the affairs of pirates, provided they leave me and my ship be. I'm willing to give you a fresh start, if you're willing to take it."

James felt an odd mixture of emotions course through him. A fresh start… wasn't that what he'd wanted when he made the decision to leave Crusty's tavern and his miserable life in Tortuga to seek out Brodie in the first place? And yet, something about the blithe way Brodie said the words bothered him. Perhaps it was because his fresh start was not anyone else's to grant – if he were to find absolution, it would have to be from within. It was not a thing that could be bestowed by another, no matter how well meaning.

But at any rate, Brodie wasn't going to have him thrown overboard, which was a relief. "My past will not be an issue," he said as much for his own benefit as for Brodie's. "I am ready and able to be at sea again, sir."

Brodie's mouth quirked in a wry smile. "Well, that's good, laddie, because you're already at sea."

James smiled politely at the humour, his eyes drawn away from Brodie by a particularly vibrant blue butterfly which was affixed in the centre of a large curio frame hanging on the bulkhead beside the port hole. Brodie followed his gaze, saw what had drawn his attention, and smiled perhaps the first true smile James had seen from him yet.

"So do you like my collection? That one you're looking at is called a blue morpho. It's native to Brazil. A real beauty, isn't it?" James nodded his assent as he surveyed the rest of the butterflies, dragonflies, and other assorted tropical insects pinned to the curio.

"You see, I like to collect rare and unusual things, Mr. Norrington. I find that, in possessing something of unique value, I am able to appreciate the splendour of the world and all its offerings all the more. Don't you agree?" Brodie's eyes were alight now as he took in his collection, delighted that James had shown interest.

"I suppose I've never really thought of it before," James replied, picking up a bronze representation of a beetle with shimmering blue gemstones set into recesses within its wings.

"That's a scarab amulet from Egypt," Brodie explained as James turned the beetle figure around in his hands. "The ancient Egyptians believed that scarabs represented the life cycle brought forth by the sun god, Ra."

James looked up at Brodie and quirked a curious eyebrow. "You're quite well-learned for a merchant sea captain."

Brodie grinned, and once again James could not tell if the smile was mocking or sincere. "Aye, well, even a Scottish sailor can pick up a book or two, can't he, Mr. Norrington? You English gentlemen – you think you have a monopoly on knowledge."

"I can assure you that I'm no longer much of a gentleman," James said drily. "Nor have I ever assumed that Englishmen hold a monopoly on anything." Other than, perhaps, a bewildered distrust of the wily and occasionally belligerent Scots.

"Once a gentleman, always a gentleman, no matter how low life has brought you," Brodie replied. "But don't take that as an insult, my good sir – indeed, it's quite agreeable to have another learned man aboard. It's a wee bit lonely when you realize you're one of perhaps four men on the entire ship who knows his letters."

James supposed it must indeed be lonely for the captain of a merchant ship who was so clearly of a different class than his crew; at least he, for most of his career, had been able to socialise with his fellow officers, and had formed friendships with many of them. But loneliness was the fate of a ship's captain; a man could not expect to become intimate with men over whom he ruled and for whom he made life or death decisions. Such intimacy brought only pain.

"With all due respect, sir, it isn't customary for a captain to socialise with members of his crew, no matter how well-learned they may be," James said. "Though I do… appreciate the sentiment."

"With all due respect to you, Mr. Norrington, you really must stop saying 'with all due respect.' Such a worthless phrase. After all, if you were speaking to me with less than due respect, we would both have quite the problem on our hands, wouldn't we?" Brodie steepled his fingers. "And, at any rate, you did agree to serve at my pleasure, did you not? So perhaps, if your diligence to your duties impresses me, I shall invite you to my stateroom once again. Perhaps we shall discuss poetry, and I shall demonstrate for you how the Scots have taken your people's language and improved upon it tenfold. I tell you, lad, you haven't experienced poetry until you've been enchanted by the ballads of the highlands." Brodie grinned, and James allowed a small half-smile as he finished his second glass of whisky. He still had so many questions – was it truly safe for a British merchant vessel to sail to Port-au-Prince? What cargo could be so lucrative as to warrant the risk? Why had Brodie taken such a special interest in him? And yet he knew he could scarcely ask such brazen questions of the mercurial captain - not if he didn't desire a flogging, or to lose his position among the crew and end up right back on Tortuga - and so he nodded briskly and stood to leave.

"I thank you for your hospitality, Captain, but Mr. Riggins has asked me to see to the main mast, and I should not tarry any longer." With a cordial nod, James turned to the door of the stateroom and prepared to leave. The whisky had burned through his blood with a warming fire and he found himself craving a bottle of rum, a craving he hoped to abate with a day of breathing in the fresh sea breeze blowing through the topsails.

"Mr. Norrington?" He turned, hand on the doorknob, to regard Brodie, who hoisted his whisky glass in a toast, smiling that enigmatic smile. "Welcome aboard the _Sagitta_."

**A/N: Saint-Domingue was the original French name for the colony that is, of course, today known as Haiti. The French took control of the western portion of the island of Hispaniola from the Spanish in 1697, and the colony was known as Saint-Domingue until a slave rebellion overthrew the French colonial government and established the independent nation of Haiti in 1804. **

**Thank you all for your continued readership! Reviews are greatly appreciated! **


	7. The Fixed Stars

There was nothing, James reflected as he climbed down from the rigging, eyes squinted tight against the glare of the setting sun, as refreshing and invigorating as a cool sea breeze. Even in these few days since pulling up anchor and setting sail from Tortuga, James felt reborn – he had forgotten how thoroughly a deep lungful of salty sea air could heal what ailed him, and his malaise of the previous week was a receding memory, replaced, if not wholly cured, by the contentment he felt at pursuing his true life's calling on the open seas.

Which was not to say he was entirely content. Brodie, like most captains, watered down the rum to make it last, and the daily rations of grog were a poor substitute for the strong distilled spirits to which James had become accustomed on Tortuga. It was in the morning in particular that he felt the loss of his daily bottle of rum most keenly; the rest of the crew had learned to give him a wide berth until he had swallowed his morning's grog, consumed a stale biscuit or two, and emerged from below decks, lest they be caught in the wake of his menacing ill-temper. Simple Pete, in particular, had made the unenviable mistake of greeting James one morning with a wide grin and a bellowed salutation as James had emerged, head throbbing and bleary-eyed, from his hammock, and had been rewarded for his cheer by a sharp cuff across the brow.

"For Christ's sake, keep your bloody voice down and that stupid smirk off your face, you thrice-buggered idiot!" James had snarled, his ordinarily caustic wit dulled by the aches that pervaded every nook and cranny of his body, a combination of his need for drink and the awkward contortions he was forced to make to accommodate his tall, broad frame into a hammock made for a man at least a foot shorter than he. Simple Pete, suitably cowed, had let James be in the morning after that (though he noticed that the simpleton still tried to sit as close to him as possible when the crew dined, drank, and carried on at night, much to his eternal consternation).

It was a new experience for him, living in the forecastle – even as a young boy midshipman, he'd been entitled to bunk in the cabins aft of the deck with the other midshipmen, and, of course, had earned his own private cabin once he'd passed his lieutenancy exam and become a rated officer. But aboard the _Sagitta_, he slept, ate, and lived with the rest of the crew, an experience that, though it lacked the amenities to which he'd been accustomed in the Navy, was not entirely without its benefits. James knew some captains were stricter about gambling and drinking below decks than others (he himself had been a fairly strict disciplinarian when he had captained ships of the line in the Navy, wanting to instil in his crew a notion that they must always be ready for action while at sea), but Brodie had been true to his word – he had no rules for what the men did below decks when they were not working, so long as they did not fight or cause any sort of disruption or mischief. And as it so happened, James was a fair hand at cards and games of chance, and he took every opportunity he could to divest his less perspicacious crewmates of their rations of grog, for which he was willing to wager a fair few shillings (knowing he was more likely than not to emerge with all his coin and a spare bit of rum besides).

And so it was again tonight, after he'd descended from the topsail and down to the crew's quarters belowdecks, where the ship's cook had managed to fix up a pot of stew and the men were digging in eagerly, a swell of loud and friendly conversation filling the air as the men ate, drank, and played cards. One man, a deckhand named Jenkins, could play the fiddle, and was performing an impromptu session as he perched lightly atop barrels of dry goods, head bowed low over his instrument in a reverie of concentration.

James found a free seat at a small battered table in the corner across from the fiddler, where he joined Riggins, Pete, and two other new hands, Richard Crosby and Sam Wells, who could both be reliably counted on to gamble away their grog to James's benefit. Simple Pete beamed gaily at him, and James suppressed an irritated growl as he focused instead on Riggins' affable grin.

"Evening, Mr. Norrington," Riggins said, ladling a generous helping of stew onto James's pewter plate. "I hope you're hungry – cook decided to treat us to a beef stew made from the stores tonight. Well, leastwise, he says it's beef." James looked at the vaguely unappetizing slop on his plate, shrugged, and dug in with a hearty forkful.

"I'm always hungry," James growled, and it was true – as an officer, he'd never wanted for food aboard his Navy ships, and in Tortuga, he at least had had coin enough for Crusty's supper special most nights, however dubiously edible it might have been. But rations were lean, he'd discovered, when a man was a mere seaman, and he'd gone to sleep more than once crammed into his hammock with a still-rumbling stomach. This was the first time aboard the _Sagitta_ that the men had been served meat, and he was grateful for it. "The cook could have prepared the stew with bilge rats and I'm not sure I'd mind altogether much."

Riggins and the other men laughed, the jest doing nothing to put them off their appetite – an iron stomach being an occupational requirement for a sailor. "Well, now that you mention it, Mr. Norrington, I'm not so sure he didn't. I know what a good side of beef tastes like, and this ain't it." Riggins shovelled a forkful of stew into his mouth and shrugged. "But it's still the best I've eaten in weeks, wherever it came from."

James helped himself to another serving of the stew (which, though not delectable by any definition, was not altogether terrible, and was a drastic improvement over hardtack and wormy biscuits), feeling sated for the first time since he'd set off from Tortuga. After the men had piled the supper dishes away, James settled back into his chair as Wells drew a tattered deck of cards from his pocket.

"Fancy a game of whist, Norrington?" Wells said, shuffling the cards nimbly between his fingers. "Maybe care to wager a few coins if you dare? I'm feeling lucky tonight, I am."

James grinned and withdrew six pence from his pocket, sliding the coin across the table. There was a significant disparity between Wells' perception of his "luck" and reality, which boded well for James. Wells spied the coin greedily and reached for his evening's share of grog, from which he'd abstained – he found gambling much more irresistible than drink, and, being perpetually short of coin, needed something of value to wager. Crosby, too, joined in, placing a twopence piece on the table, much to the consternation of James – what good was winning coin on a ship, where a man couldn't spend it on rum or women?

"We need a fourth," James said, looking to the tawny-haired quartermaster. "Care to join us, Mr. Riggins?"

"I'm no good for gambling, Mr. Norrington," Riggins groused good-naturedly, shaking his massive head. "Not since I lost half a good fortune in a dockside hovel in Bridgetown, no sir."

"Well, that sounds like quite the tale," James replied with an easy grin – he could nearly taste Wells' grog, weak as it was, but the promise of drink along with a full stomach put him in a rare good mood. "But I truly must insist you join our game – you wouldn't want the men to mutiny because they couldn't find a fourth for whist, would you?"

Riggins frowned in mock reproach. "Best not to be saying such things, even in jest, Mr. Norrington," he said. "But so be it, I'll join your game. But I won't go over eight pence, so if my luck goes poorly you'll be having to find another partner once I'm played out."

They divided into partners – James ended up with Riggins, which was just as well, since he wanted Wells' grog and could not care less about the others' coin – and James reclined easily while Wells divvied up the hands.

"So tell me how a man loses 'half a good fortune' in a Bridgetown hovel, Mr. Riggins," James said as he casually apprised his hand. It was a fair hand, but not a great one – but no matter, if Wells played as poorly as he usually did.

Riggins made an exasperated noise, as if suffering the injustice of his loss all over again. "Ah, 'twas years ago, in my ill-spent youth. I had just been paid by my captain and was full of piss and vinegar, and decided I wanted to double my wages the easy way. I wasn't half bad at cards, you know. But that cocky little scofflaw – Rider or some such was his name – was better, and he picked me out for a mark as soon as I set foot in the tavern. Talked me into wagering everything I had and beat me every hand." Riggins shook his head ruefully. "I'll swear to the Lord above he was cheating somehow, though I couldn't prove it. But at any rate, I frittered away all that coin to nothing and I haven't played a game of chance since." Riggins looked at his cards and cast a wry glance up at James. "Least until you roped me in tonight."

"Well, it's not as if I can ask Pete to join, is it?" James said, casting a wary glare at Simple Pete, who had wandered over to Jenkins the fiddler and sat, entranced, at his feet. "I can't relieve old Sam here of his grog if I don't have a partner." He smirked, and Wells shot an indignant glare across the table at James. James returned his glare with a grin, and turned back to Riggins. "Perhaps if you are not amenable, I could invite Mr. Kurtz?"

The men around the table – Riggins included – grimaced at the thought. A week aboard the _Sagitta_ had passed so far, and James had yet to hear Kurtz utter a word, nor was the hulking boatswain ever seen belowdecks with the rest of the men, not even at mealtime.

"Now there's a jest you shouldn't be making," Riggins said uncomfortably. "I've never had any personal problems with Mr. Kurtz, myself, but he's not exactly what you'd call a friendly sort." James suppressed a sarcastic snigger – that was, to say the least, an understatement. He still hadn't seen the man crack the vaguest hint of a smile.

"I seen Hinks sneakin' around earlier," Wells said, _sotto voce_. "Probably Kurtz never comes down from the deck at all and has his little lackey bring him his grub. That way he can turn that evil eye on the poor sods what're above decks after lights out." Hinks was the boatswain's mate, whose sole job aboard the ship was to report to Kurtz, to be the eyes and ears for the big man whenever he was not around. He was a weaselly little man with a pinched, greedy face, and James had taken an instant disliking to him.

"Aye, well, a word to the wise," Riggins said carefully, as if debating whether to allow these new shipmates into his confidence. "Kurtz is just as mean as he looks, so best for you all to mind him as you would the captain himself. And don't be discountin' Hinks, neither. He's Kurtz's mate for a reason – because Kurtz can trust him, and because he's got a fair sizeable mean streak himself. You'd all do well to give both of them a wide berth and a generous amount of respect."

"Don't worry on that account none, mate," Wells said. "I don't plan on even lookin' in his general direction if I can help it. Gives me the heebies, he does. Makes you wonder why the cap'n keeps him around."

"That's exactly why the captain keeps him around," James replied. "To keep rabble like you in line." He laughed as Wells responded with a scowl and an obscene hand gesture.

"But what about the captain's old lady?" Crosby observed suddenly. "If I had a wife, I sure wouldn't want her around no man like that."

Three heads turned in surprise towards the ordinarily quiet Crosby. "The captain's wife is aboard the ship?" James asked, incredulous. He'd been aboard the ship for a week – had met with Captain Brodie personally, and been to the captain's stateroom, even – and this was the first he'd heard that a woman – the captain's wife, no less – was aboard the ship.

Riggins looked acutely uncomfortable as the three new men turned to him for confirmation. "Aye, but you lot aren't supposed to know," he said, directing a pointed look at Crosby, who shrugged his shoulders innocently.

"I just heard some of the old hands talking, I swear," Crosby said. "Something about whether they'd see Mrs. Brodie disembark at Port-au-Prince this time, like they'd never actually seen her before."

"Aye, because they haven't," Riggins said firmly. "Mrs. Brodie is a very delicate woman, or so the cap'n says. Gets seasick, she does, and doesn't like to be around strange men. So she stays down in the cap'n's quarters. That's why the cap'n doesn't say anything to the crew – he's afraid that one of you tars, deep in your cups and longing to see a glimpse of a womanly form after months at sea, might try and find her, talk to her, or worse. So he doesn't tell no one she's aboard, lest temptation get the better of you. Only me and Kurtz know – and now you lot, so if you know what's good for you you'll keep it that way!" Riggins looked uncomfortable to be chastising the men, and his eyes were round and wide and almost pleading, as if begging the men to understand that he wasn't cross with them, that he only told them these things for their own good.

Wells and Crosby furrowed their brows, seemingly content with Riggins' explanation; but James felt the gears in his mind turning, agitated and deep in thought. He recalled the captain mentioning a wife when he spoke to the men from the quarterdeck on that first day aboard the _Sagitta_, but why keep her presence such a secret? Sailors could be a lusty sort, it was true, but something about the explanation seemed off to James.

"If Mrs. Brodie is so beset by seasickness, then why does she sail with the captain?" he asked Riggins. "Most sailors' wives live ashore. A difficult separation, to be sure, but if the lady is ill-suited for the sea…?" He allowed his speculation to trail off, but Riggins only shrugged helplessly in reply.

"To be honest, I can't say. I've never actually met Mrs. Brodie myself. Neither has Mr. Kurtz, to my understanding," Riggins said. "The cap'n says it's because she misses him too fierce to be left behind, and he feels the same. I suppose love must be strong enough to overcome a lack of sea legs, at least for the cap'n and his missus."

James felt his lip curl ever so slightly. When he'd been a commodore in the Royal Navy and on top of the world – when he'd wanted to marry Elizabeth Swann – he'd imagined just that: taking her with him on his voyages and living with her in his stately cabin aboard the _Dauntless_. Mrs. Brodie's presence was, in a way, yet another reminder of everything he had lost. He felt a swell of resentment rise up within him and reached for his own untouched bottle of grog.

"Rank hath its privileges," James said acerbically. "But as the comfort of a woman is at present denied to we mere seamen, I suggest we return our attentions to the indulgences we can enjoy." Taking a long pull of his grog, he fixed Wells with an indulgent smile. "I am particularly anticipating the extra ration of rum that Sam seems so intent to give away."

Wells flung an incensed oath at James, and the men, determined not to dwell on the unpleasantness of Kurtz the boatswain or the mystery of Mrs. Brodie, threw themselves wholly into their game of cards. James's anticipation proved well-founded; Wells' luck deserted him as usual and by the time the men had decided to call it a night, he had earned both Wells' and Crosby's rations of grog and a handful of coin, which he had given over to Riggins for his share, choosing to keep the rum for himself.

"Next time, Norrington! 'Twas just a bad night for me, that's all," Wells promised as he pocketed his cards and headed for his hammock, and James smirked his agreement – if Wells was so bound and determined to give him rum, who was he to complain?

"It appears we make a good team, Mr. Riggins," James said, uncorking Wells' bottle of grog and taking a swig. "I'd be honoured to allow you to help me divest those poor sods of their drink any time."

"I told you I don't intend to make a habit of gambling, and I meant it," Riggins said seriously. "But I can't deny it was a pleasant way to wile away the hours. Just don't get too deep into your cups that you miss the morning bell. I'd hate to see any misfortune come your way."

"Don't worry," James said, uncertain whether to be touched or irritated at the quartermaster's kindly paternal concern. "I survived on Tortuga for long enough to know how to handle my drink." And so, bidding the other man a good night, James navigated his way through the forecastle to ascend the ladder topside, unwilling as yet to subject himself to the discomfort of his too-small hammock, and wishing to enjoy his rum in the fresh sea air, away from the stuffy reek of sweaty men that pervaded the hold below.

As he emerged topside, he first scoured the deck for Kurtz – it was not forbidden for men to be above decks when they were not working, but he knew Riggins' advice to avoid attracting the surly boatswain's attention was sound, and he wished to steer clear of any encounter with the man. Spying Kurtz leaning against the foremast with his burly arms crossed, James made his way quickly across the starboard deck, making his way for his usual spot against the starboard side by the mizzenmast halyards, where he could lean against the railing and enjoy the solitude and quiet with relatively few distractions.

The night was calm and the sea quiet, and James reclined against the railing, drink in hand, and pondered the magnificent scattering of stars that graced the ink-black sky. He loved being topside on a perfect clear night such as this; the stars were a mariner's oldest and truest friend, fixed for ever in the firmament, their unchanging, unyielding permanence steering many a sailor back on course. He spied the constellation for which the _Sagitta_ was named, a small and unremarkable grouping of stars in the shape of an arrow, loosed by Hercules, hurtling forth to slay the demigod's foes. Their ancient presence was a comfort to him, and he wondered idly whether he would ever find his own star, to guide his restless, wayward soul back on course after everything had gone so terribly wrong.

He had just finished his last bottle of grog and was feeling the warming euphoria of the drink making its way through his blood when he first heard it. At first he thought it must have been a particularly sharp breeze blowing through the sails, and he shook his head, pleasantly muddled by the rum, to clear out the cobwebs that might be affecting the clarity of his thought. But then he heard it again, and he was quite certain that it was not the wind through the sails producing such a winsome melody.

He cast his eyes to the sails to see if perhaps the sound came from a sailor, spending a lonely night atop the crow's nest. He was surprised to spy the tall lean form of Captain Brodie, who stood dimly silhouetted against the top of the mainmast, uniquely identifiable by the long coat that billowed out behind him. Perhaps James was not alone in his desire to enjoy the comforting solitude of the stars. But then again, James did not have the warmth of a woman to share his bed with, unlike the captain.

There, again, the keening cry came to his ears; it seemed to him to be haunting and plaintive, sorrowful in a way, and he became aware that it was a woman's voice, singing into the night. A woman's voice – was he so drunk that he was hearing a siren calling to him from across the waves, beckoning him to his doom? But there it was again, and no – it was most definitely a woman's voice, issuing from somewhere beneath him. Could this be Brodie's mysterious wife, who was so reclusive that the captain permitted no mention of her to the men at all? Why would such a timid, fearful woman announce her presence so clearly – or was it only clear to James, who stood on the aft deck where no man would be ordinarily working late at night? Did she hope her husband would hear her mournful cries and retire at once to their bedchamber to keep his frail and seasick wife company through the wave-tossed night?

Later, James would not be able to say exactly what had spurred him. He supposed that it must have been curiosity, at least in part, his interest having been piqued earlier in the night by Riggins' tales of the captain's unseen wife. If he were being honest with himself, he must also account for the stirring he felt in his blood to be near a woman again, his ache having gone unsated since he had partaken of the comforts of Josephine the whore on Tortuga some days before. And, of course, he was certain he could not have been so bold, so foolish, had he not been thoroughly in the grips of three bottles of grog. But all those things taken together tipped the scales against the rational, sensible decision – which was to leave well enough alone, pretend he had heard nothing, and return to the forecastle to his uncomfortable hammock – and so, casting a furtive eye towards Brodie in the crow's nest and Kurtz at the foremast to ensure that neither were paying him any mind, he descended carefully into the forbidden lower aft deck, where the captain's cabin waited with its mysterious and alluring siren within.

He crossed through the narrow, tight quarters quietly, past Brodie's stateroom, and paused at what must have been the captain's cabin. The keening song was clearly coming from within, and at this proximity he could hear the voice clear as a bell, and the beauty and clarity of it made him ache with a familiar need. But that was not what he was here for, he reminded himself sternly. (Then why _was_ he here? – his treacherous thoughts countered.) But regardless of the purpose for his visit, he could resist the sweet siren's voice no longer, and, with a gentle rap on the hatch to announce his presence, he pushed the door open slowly.

Though the woman's voice had enticed him below with its alluring sweetness, he nevertheless found himself utterly unprepared for the stark beauty that greeted him as he entered the cabin. A lissom young woman stood before him, hair cascading down her back in dark wavy tresses, her statuesque form garbed in a gauzy nightgown that clung tantalizingly to her curves. Her skin was porcelain in the pale moonlight, and as she turned to regard her intruder, he could not help but admire the delicacy of her features and the red fullness of her lips, even as her countenance registered a medley of shock, startle, and fright. Immediately he raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture before she could cry out in fear.

"Please, do not be frightened," he said hastily as she stammered backwards into the bulkhead. "I mean you no harm, I promise." Her eyes, dark and doe-like in the silvery light, were wide and afraid. With a belatedness of clarity that could only be blamed on the rum, he realized how he must seem to her – a large, strange man who had intruded unwanted into her bedchamber and who yet insisted she had nothing to fear. His shoulders sagging with the realization, he dropped his hands and held his palms open to her, hoping to reassure her that he truly did not have ill intentions. "It is just that I heard you singing, and I found the melody so entrancing that I simply had to make the acquaintance of the fair creature responsible. I do hope you will forgive my terrible lack of manners and rude intrusion into your privacy."

His words seemed to assuage her fear somewhat; her posture relaxed ever so slightly, and her expression underwent a subtle metamorphosis from distressed alarm to suspicious apprehension. James felt his mouth go dry and a tightness catch hold in his throat; she was beautiful, so very beautiful, but now that he was down here with her, he realized the incredible folly he'd made. She was the captain's wife, for God's sake! If he frightened her too greatly, if she screamed, if Brodie caught him down here…

"You shouldn't be here." Her first words to him echoed his own present thoughts, and they came carried to him in a lyrical Gaelic brogue, similar to Brodie's – but where Brodie's accent was rough-hewn with a Scottish burr, Mrs. Brodie's voice was all music and grace, and he guessed that she hailed from Ireland.

"You shouldn't be here," she repeated, with more urgency. "If he finds you – if you're caught – you don't know what he'll do to you!" The suspicion writ across her visage was replaced yet again, this time by a panicked insistence that seemed to James to be directed towards him, rather than at him. "You must leave now! Go on! Get gone with you!"

"But…" James stammered in response. He didn't know what he'd expected to happen, what he'd wanted her to say, but being dismissed so quickly and summarily surely hadn't been it. What _had_ he wanted? To charm her, flatter her with flowery compliments regarding her gift for song? To press his lips to hers and steal a forbidden kiss from those ruby lips? To lie with her, right underneath the nose of her husband, his captain? "Mrs. Brodie, I do apologize. I had no wish to alarm you. I…" He faltered as he tried to explain his presence to her, when in truth he could barely justify it to himself.

"I only wished to meet you, my lady. I had no inkling that you were aboard the ship until this evening, and I was struck by how lonely you must be, locked in this cabin for the endless days and weeks. And once I heard your graceful song in the night, I knew I must behold you at once. But if my presence displeases you, I shall take my leave." None of it was untrue, but he was nevertheless struck by how insincere he must sound, how much he was attempting to cover his carnal intentions with base flattery. Which was itself not entirely untrue, though he certainly had no intention of imposing himself where he was not desired. Swallowing thickly, he managed a courteous nod to Mrs. Brodie, and turned to depart.

"You are a strange and brave man, to call upon me in defiance of your captain's orders." Her voice stilled him, and he turned back to her with a curious hope. Her countenance had shifted yet again, and in place of the panic he now saw her regarding him with an intensely inquisitive gaze.

"In truth, it was not the captain who forbade my presence here," he said. "He made no mention of you at all, nor made any warnings to avoid your company. But I heard – "

"Heard about the captain's mysterious bride, elusive as a spectre, so fragile and delicate that she may never emerge nor be seen by any man?" She bestowed upon him an unmistakably wry smile, and he felt a warmth suffuse him – the entire travail had been worth it, if only to be privy, for just a few moments, to that wondrous smile.

"Something like that," he admitted, feeling shy and awkward as a schoolboy. He suppressed his own wry grin. He'd long ago lost count of the women he'd bedded, and he marvelled that any lady could still bring him to feel the bashful inelegance of infatuation he'd last felt all those years ago, in Port Royal –

_No_, he told his mind firmly as thoughts of Elizabeth threatened to intrude and spoil the enchantment. He would not allow her to ruin this moment, as she'd ruined so much else that had been right and good for him.

Perhaps his internal conflict had been apparent, written across his features; or perhaps Mrs. Brodie was uniquely perceptive. "You came to me because you thought I must be lonely," she mused, recalling his earlier words. "And yet I think it is you who are the lonely one, my handsome stranger. Lonely and searching for something, though you know not what. Perhaps you thought you might find it here?"

James stood transfixed, unsure how to respond to this strange creature who regarded him now with an aloof – yet unmistakable – kindness, and who had seemed to see right through the mask he'd painstakingly constructed for himself during his years of exile: the beard, the rum, the devil-may-care manner.

"I don't know what I thought I'd find," he replied softly, feeling a complicated melange of emotions swirling through him – curiosity, attraction, lust, affinity, and perhaps even a touch of the gentleness he'd last exhibited to the woman he'd loved so long ago. "But I am glad, nevertheless, that I found you."

She smiled at him then, a true, warm smile, and he returned her smile fully and without reservation. But as fleeting as the sun, consumed by clouds scudding across the sky, so her smile disappeared, to be replaced once more by the nervous urgency he'd seen not minutes before.

"I misapprehended you," she said, her voice strained with a tension he wished he could soothe. "I feared you were the kind of man my husband has always warned about, a lusty sailor intent on despoiling my honour." James flushed, hoping that his carnal imaginings of her were sufficiently removed from such ill intent as to exclude him from that disreputable breed of "lusty sailors" of which she spoke.

"But nevertheless, you must leave me at once," she said, all traces of warmth gone from her voice as she fixed him with a firm and unmoving look. "If my husband finds you down here, you shall suffer tremendously. And – " she broke off abruptly.

"I find I do not wish such a fate for you," she finished, quietly and to his surprise. James marvelled at the odd creature before him, undeniable in her beauty, a true enigma in her nature. She seemed, truly, to like him, but he did not know why, nor why she so feared for her safety that she remained locked in the captain's cabin, unable to enjoy the sea breeze or the sun or the stars but for the half-glimpses of the world beyond that she could spy through the small porthole. In truth, he had come to see her to sate his curiosity, but, upon being dismissed by her, found he was left with far more questions than answers.

"I thank you for your kindness," he said sincerely, bowing his head to her in the genteel fashion that had been a part and parcel of the social graces of his old life. "And I will respect your wishes. Good night, Mrs. Brodie."

He turned to leave yet again, and yet again, her voice stilled him.

"Niamh."

He turned back to her, her silhouette framed by the porthole, a vision in the moonlight. "I'm sorry?" he said, brows furrowed in confusion.

"My name," she replied. "You may call me Niamh."

The name was strange to him, doubtless an artefact of the Irish language, but it rolled from her tongue with a lyrical beauty that was altogether fitting.

"Very well, Niamh," he said. "You may call me James."

She smiled beatifically at him. "You are unlike most men I have met, James. There is a fire within you. Perhaps it smoulders so lowly that even you have forgotten, but it burns still. Perhaps one day you shall remember to rekindle your fire, James. And now I must bid you good night."

There was so much he still wanted to ask her – why did she insist on staying below the decks, when she did not seem nearly as delicate or fragile as he'd been led to believe? Why did she insist upon following Brodie in his adventures if she clearly found shipboard life to be stifling and restrictive? And why was she showing him – a man who had intruded most crudely upon her solitude with, truthfully, less than pure intentions – such kindness and open consideration? And what was this mysticism to do with his 'inner fire' and his 'loneliness' and his 'search for something he could not describe'? He knew the Irish could be superstitious to a fault; was that the whole of it, or was there something more, something about him that had inspired her musings?

He wanted to ask all of these things, and yet he knew he had intruded too long on her already, and he knew he had been dismissed, and so he merely bowed his head in another mannerly nod.

"Good night, Niamh," he said, and slipped out the hatch. He thought he saw her smiling as he pulled the hatch slowly closed behind him.

He was careful, when he ascended the ladder, to make certain that the attentions of the scant few crewmembers on deck – especially Brodie and Kurtz – were directed elsewhere before he scrambled quickly out of the aft hold and back to his familiar drinking spot. Testing his three bottles of grog to see if there was a drop left, he found himself disappointed, and, pocketing the empty bottles, he made his way back to the forecastle, his mind a maelstrom of questions, doubts, and pondered curiosities. Descending the ladder, he made his way through the galley to the crew's quarters, where his shipmates tossed and turned and slept in their swinging hammocks. Finding his own berth, he divested himself of his overcoat and boots, stacking the boots beneath his hammock and hanging the coat on a jutting peg near his feet, before climbing in.

The hammock was, as always, acutely uncomfortable, and James was forced, as always, to fold his tall frame into an unwieldy contortion in order to fit. He wished for his old bed back in his room in the Mermaid's Tail, which, though shabby and ill-made, nevertheless permitted him to stretch out to his full length. Wishing he had one more bottle of rum to dull his thoughts and mute the ache of the cramped hammock, James fell into a fitful sleep, thinking of the mysterious Niamh Brodie and her soft, delicate features, and wishing he were the fortunate man who could spend the night curled up in a real bed with such a woman in his arms.

* * *

**A/N: The term "tars," which Riggins uses to refer to James and the other men, comes from "Jack Tar," which was slang for a British sailor (particularly a Navy seaman, though it could be used broadly for any English sailor). Thanks for reading and, as always, reviews are greatly appreciated!**


	8. Absolution

The day, when it broke, was as ordinary and unremarkable as any other. The sun crested over the waves warm and bright, and James, from his perch on the mainmast, could tell the weather would be clear and pleasant with an easy breeze – nearly perfect for sailing. He rubbed his forearm wearily against his face, wiping the sweat from his brow and wishing he'd gotten more sleep. He and some of the other men had had a late night of it, playing cards and swapping tales and drinking grog into the wee hours. James had learned that Riggins was the son of a sailor from Whitby ("'Course I would be, what with this name. Destined for the sea I was, so Pa always used to say," the ruddy-faced man had added as an aside). Wells, after cagily evading the inquiries of the others for most of the night, finally admitted that he'd come to the West Indies to make his fortune after his release from a six-month sentence in a debtor's prison in London, a revelation which James found thoroughly underwhelming, given the man's obvious propensity to land himself in arrears through feckless gambling. Simple Pete had not offered much insight into his past – evidently he'd been a street urchin in a port city (he wasn't exactly sure which one) who had been taken in as a sort of mascot by a seafaring crew, who had taught the simple-minded lad basic shipboard duties in exchange for his board.

Of his own past, James was reticent and unforthcoming, sharing just enough to keep the other men from badgering him for more. He had confided that he had, in fact, served in the Royal Navy, and that he had left the service, though he did not go into any of the details of the storm or his subsequent scapegoating by the Admiralty. Riggins, who was cleverer than he sometimes seemed, adduced that James had probably been an officer because of his "gentlemanly speech and ways," to which James had merely grinned and replied that his life, of late, had hardly been that of a gentleman. Of the pirates – and Elizabeth – he said nothing, and though he could tell that Riggins at least suspected there was more to his story, the men were happy enough to let him be, especially once he assured a wide-eyed Simple Pete that he had not, in fact, been drummed out for mutiny, piracy, or any other capital offence.

"Do you think I'd be here telling you this tale if I'd been convicted of mutiny, you great fool? I would have been stripped, flogged, and hanged from the nearest yardarm." But even his insults to Simple Pete were, on the whole, meant in good jest – though he still found the simpleton's doe-eyed attention irksome, the man's good-natured loyalty was, in its own way, agreeable.

Service aboard the _Sagitta_, in general, had proved, somewhat to James's surprise, to be rather agreeable. It was not the Navy and never would be, but the crew – Kurtz and Hinks excepted – were, if not openly friendly, then at least amicably polite. He had encountered none of the sullen side-eyed glances he'd so frequently endured by the pirates on Tortuga, who hated him for the reputation he'd so well-earned in his past life as the "scourge of piracy." If James was not exactly happy, he was at the least not as miserable as he'd been on Tortuga.

None of which, at the moment, made up for his lack of sleep and rum. Having consumed all his grog as he wiled away the hours late last night, he'd had none to ease his throbbing head this morning, and so, after sullenly gnawing on a rock-hard biscuit and silencing Simple Pete with a doom-laden glare, he'd come up topside, hoping the sea breeze would eventually clear away his lingering drink-deprived aches.

He'd realized quickly that the day would be a hot one, and so, stripping himself to the waist, he'd ascended the main mast, adjusting the rigging on the sails as needed, and allowed the sun's warmth and the fresh sea air to seep into his skin. The work on the topsail was rigorous and required all of his strength, and James felt sweat beading across his brow and trickling in a steady stream down his chest and back as he pulled the lines with all his might, plying the sails against the steady wind that cooled the sweat to a pleasant chill against his skin. But though he found thus some relief from the unremitting heat of the midday Caribbean sun, he found yet no respite for his weariness, which had been compounded by his laborious exertions.

In his exhaustion, he found his mind drifting again and again to things that troubled him – namely, Elizabeth, but also, to a lesser extent, Niamh. He knew he was drawn to her, though he knew equally well that such an inclination was suicidal – he had seen enough of Brodie's mercurial nature to know that the captain would not likely be forgiving of another man's dalliance with his wife. He knew he did not love her, not like he'd loved Elizabeth (the admission of the latter sentiment still sending a roiling jet of anger through his blood), but he was fascinated by her nonetheless. Given the supreme foolishness of his attraction to Niamh, James almost believed it would be better for him to fixate his unrequited longings on Elizabeth – she, after all, had finally allowed him to have her, and if he had to choose between cuckolding Captain Brodie or that insufferable whelp Will Turner, well now – that made his decision all the easier.

But the fact of the matter was that Niamh was here, and Elizabeth was not. Also, Niamh had, despite having every logical reason to the contrary, treated him with kindness and understanding, and her cryptic statements to him had only served to intrigue him further. The fact that she was stunningly gorgeous was also not insignificant, he was compelled to admit.

Grunting with the effort of tugging the ropes into place, James blinked as beads of sweat dripped into his eyes. Securing the line at last, he wiped his palm across his brow, even as a sharp wind gusseted through the topsail, cooling his bare chest at once. He cast his gaze across the horizon – the perfect day of the morning was gone, clouds having scudded across the sky, blotting out the sun along the way. The wind seemed to be picking up as well, and the clouds to the south – large, towering, and a forbidding grey – sent a creeping thrill of apprehension down his spine. It was not rare for storms to blow up at sea, of course, and every veteran sailor knew how to weather them, but there was something about those clouds, something ominous and familiar, and he felt the beginnings of dread in his gut.

"Ho there, Norrington!"

He looked below him to see the grizzled face of a man named Perkins suspended below him on the mast.

"Riggins sent me up here to relieve you – says you've been up there since dawn! What with this storm a'brewin', he wanted a fresh pair of hands up here on the mast." Perkins was an affable and burly man, not as tall as James but just as broad, and James reckoned he was right. He'd been rubbing his face as much to stay awake as to wipe the sweat away, and he could do with some chow and a drink.

"All right, Perkins," he said by way of greeting and acquiescence, swinging himself ably down the ladder and swapping places with Perkins. It wasn't until his feet hit the deck again that he realized just how weary he truly was. Well then, nothing for it but a bite of grub, a bottle of grog, and off to the hammock with him – with any luck he'd be asleep and the storm would blow over through the night, and he wouldn't have to relive the nightmare all over again. He only hoped cook had come up with something hearty tonight – he wasn't in the mood for hardtack.

"Hope you don't mind I called you down," Riggins said, greeting him on the forecastle. "Looks like it's fixing to get nasty out here, and if you got as little sleep as I did, then you need some rest before we hit the worst of it."

"I just hope cook decided to dip into our thinning reserves of meat again tonight," James groused as the men descended down the ladder below decks. "I don't think I can bear another night of eating stale biscuits."

As it turned out, cook had scrounged up some dried beef, which, along with the hardtack, made for a parching meal, but it was meat and James could not complain. Washing it down with his night's grog, James, feeling quite sleepy now that his belly was full, decided to call it an early night, and headed to his hammock to get some well-needed rest.

He fell into a restive sleep as the waves, bolder and coarser, rocked the ship with increasing abandon. He could hear the _Sagitta_ creaking and groaning in protest as the sea buffeted her hull, and James knew that the men up top would be in for a rough night of it. Squeezing his eyes shut tight against the memories of the storm that had ruined his career, he tried to will himself to sleep, as if to do so would will away the storm which threatened outside. Focusing on the rhythmic swaying of his hammock, James felt his heart hammering against his chest as the memories swarmed through his mind – the cries of the men as the waves crashed over the deck, sweeping dozens to their doom overboard; the heart-rending _crack_ of the foremast as it splintered apart under the relentless assault of wind and water, crashing down onto the deck, foretelling the fate of the _Dauntless_ as she was torn asunder; all because of him, because in his haste to close in on Sparrow and Turner, he'd misjudged the angle of the storm, misjudged its power, misjudged everything…

A crashing of boots against wood was his only warning before a booming voice – James's sluggish brain supplied it as Riggins' – bellowed through the hold.

"Hurricane, lads! Hurricane a blowin' up from the headwind! All hands on deck! We need all men on deck!"

Instantly the men were out of their hammocks, the air abuzz with conversation as they scurried about, grabbing trousers and shirts and rubbing the sleep from their eyes before heading up top. James felt the pounding in his chest quicken twofold, as the terrible sense that he had already lived this tragedy sank over him like a shroud. Was this God's own punishment for surviving the hurricane that had killed his men and wrecked his ship? Death, furious at being denied its prize, grasping out for the man who had eluded it years before?

James was beset by trembling shakes; he felt responsible for it all. His presence, here, had put the _Sagitta_ and all the men aboard her in danger, and fate would have its retribution, and these men would die for his sins, as the men aboard the _Dauntless_ – good men, the King's men, family men – had before. Perhaps if he jumped overboard now – perhaps if he drowned himself in the storm, the bloodlust of the gods would be sated, and the storm would spare the rest of the crew. He felt a keening sense of agony rising in his chest, a terrible panic, and a phantom fist gripped tight his heart as he ran unsteady hands over his face, feeling the bristle of his beard and the sunworn skin of his forehead. He cursed that he had ever survived the wreck of the _Dauntless_. For what – so that he could become a drunken, whoring wretch on Tortuga? So that he could take Elizabeth Swann's virginity in a last act of spite against his former fiancée and her bastard whelp blacksmith? So that he could get another good crew of sailors killed, innocent casualties of his ill luck?

Something slapped him in the face, hard, and he reeled backwards, shaken by the invisible blow. Blinking his eyes in confusion, he only had time to register a large, meaty paw wrapping itself around his forearm and pulling him close in, and then he was looking into the eyes of a stern Tom Riggins, whose tawny hair was matted down to his forehead, soaked through from the storm.

"Get hold of yourself, man!" Riggins thundered, as unyielding as James had ever seen him. "We need all men topside and ship-shape if we've any hope of weathering this storm! I need you to pull yourself together!"

James stared blankly at the quartermaster. Didn't he understand, the fool? This was all James's fault, all of it, and how could he possibly _help_? The last time he'd had any authority in a storm, men had died. So very many men. No, it would be better for them all if he threw himself overboard now, placated Neptune's wrath, before they all were in for it. He opened his mouth to tell Riggins just that, but Riggins clearly did not wish to dialogue; he shook James like a ragdoll and pushed him back into the bulkhead.

"Now you listen here! This crew needs you right now, and you'll be doing your duty like the rest of us!" Riggins leaned back a bit, a look that might have been disappointment settling over his features. "I never thought to see the day that you were unmanned, Mr. Norrington."

James bristled at once at the deadly accusation. "I am not unmanned!" he protested hotly, a fierce heat coursing through his blood. "Don't you see, goddamn it? I can't help you! I can't help anyone! You wanted to know why I left the Navy?" It was all coming out in a great rush, and James could not stop the tide of words even if he'd wanted to. "Because I lost my ship to a storm such as this! And not just any ship! The flagship of His Majesty's entire Caribbean fleet! Lost and wrecked and most of her crew dead because of me! I am no use to anyone in a storm, Mr. Riggins, not if you don't want to die like all of my lads!" He felt a strange heat on his face, felt his heart hammering, but the words would not cease. "They died because of me. My boys. I won't see you lot die because of me, too. I won't. I'll throw myself overboard, perhaps the sea will spare you her vengeance – "

"You'll do no such thing!" The disappointment in Riggins' face was gone, replaced by something that looked infuriatingly to James like paternal concern. "I'm sorry about your ship and your crew, Mr. Norrington. Truly I am. And I'm sorry for thinking you a coward. But you can't bring them back through dying, man!"

"I know that, dammit!" James was furious and confused – why didn't Riggins understand how perilous he was to have around, what terrible luck, how he would bring them all to doom? "But I can help you, I can save you – "

"You can help us by going topside and putting yourself on the ropes!" Riggins roared. "We need every able-bodied man for it! And none of us have been through a 'cane, to boot! Heard about 'em, sure, but sailed through one, nay! We're rudderless here, Mr. Norrington! The only chance we've got is if every man does his part!" Riggins again gave him a compassionate look. "You're a Navy man. You understand duty more than most of this lot does. I need you to do your duty now. Don't make me ask again."

James was floundering in his despair and confusion. In the end, it might have been the pleading look in Riggins' eyes. Or it might have been his words, cutting at last through the malaise that fogged James's mind. But, after a pause, he nodded slowly.

Riggins, his face a mask of relief, clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man," he said. "Meet me topside – we need as many men as we can on the sails!"

James ran his still-trembling hands over his burning face, and was surprised to find them coated in moisture. He looked around wildly through the abandoned forecastle hold, suddenly diverted by the desire to look for his shirt. He shook his head firmly – no more diversions, no more distractions. His demon was bellowing above decks at this very moment, crying for him to come out and meet his fate. And he would not meet it like a craven eunuch, cowering in the ship's hold, as unmanned as Riggins had accused him of being. Forgetting about his shirt, James pushed himself up the ladder and onto the deck and into the midst of the storm.

* * *

The wind howled, a terrible banshee wail that cut through the air like a fey blade and ripped its grasping clawed fingers through the sails, threatening to tear them asunder. The deck pitched and rolled as the ship was tossed about in the tumultuous waves, water crashing over the rails and drenching the men to the bone. The rain flensed their skin, as vicious as any boatswain's flog, driven nearly straight by the gusting winds. James was nearly knocked to his feet by the raw, savage force of the storm, recovering only as he grasped the deck rail. He saw men scurrying about, buffeted and driven by the wind but somehow still able to move, and he could hear snatches of bellowed commands through the ever-keening gale. He saw Riggins standing at the foremast, and the man wore a palpable look of relief as he saw James emerge from the forecastle.

"Norrington!" Riggins bellowed at him, shouting to be heard over the storm. "We've got a fierce headwind, coming at us dead-on! It's threatening to rip apart the sails!"

"You're sailing into the headwind?" James, now that he was topside and in the midst of the storm, felt an odd sort of calm settling over him. The memories of the _Dauntless_ were still omnipresent in his mind – the collapsing foremast, the men scattered from the deck like so many tin soldiers, the final, heartrending shattering of her hull in half as the sea claimed her – but, viewed through the lens of a new storm, they felt strangely distant, as though seen, in the words of the Bible he rarely read, through a glass darkly. He remembered the _Dauntless_ moving against the headwinds of the storm, having turned south to complete the pursuit of the _Pearl_, and thus meeting her doom, and –

"NO!" James thundered, grabbing Riggins and shaking him hard. Riggins' eyes were wide in alarm, and James could see that his faith in him had flagged, and that he had thought James come unmanned again, and so he quickly added, "We mustn't sail into the headwind! That will be the doom of us all!"

"What are you on about?" Riggins looked bewilderedly at James. "Of course we're sailing into the headwind – we're making for Port-au-Prince!"

James shook his head furiously, water spraying from his wind-swept hair like a great shaggy dog shaking itself dry. "That's when the _Dauntless_ met her doom! We had been weathering the storm well enough – we sailed her through a calm patch and believed the worst of it to be over – but when we emerged, the winds were far fiercer and it wasn't long before she was wrecked!"

Riggins shook his massive, tawny head. "I've heard about these calm spots, but if what you say is true – we'd need to head away from the storm, we'd have to turn the ship around! I'm not certain we can turn her full about in these winds, Mr. Norrington!"

"We needn't turn her full about!" James felt his blood quickening, the memories of the early stages of the storm – when the _Dauntless_ was, though certainly under siege, nevertheless holding firm – coming back to him in rapid succession. "We need only make it across the centre to the other side of the storm! The storm's meeting us from the south – if we turn starboard and sail west, we'll be out of the worst of it!"

"Then we'll be caught in the crosswinds! The sails will be ripped to tatters!"

As if punctuating Riggins' words, the spritsail at the fore tore asunder, the screams of the men in response lost quickly in the cacophony of the rending sailcloth and the shrieking wind. The sail flapped madly about like some demon-haunted marionette before tearing away entirely, nearly knocking down two of the foremast sailors before being spirited away into the grey by the hurricane gale.

James shook his head. "The sails will certainly be ripped to tatters if we stay on course! No, we must turn for starboard and ride it out on the other side – it's our only chance!"

Riggins stared hard at James before giving him a firm, decisive nod. "Aye, so be it. I told you your experience would help us, Mr. Norrington."

"My experience may yet get us all killed," James said bitterly. "But I've been here before, and we will most certainly die if we maintain course into the headwind."

"Then it isn't me you need be telling this to, Mr. Norrington!" Riggins pointed aft, to the quarterdeck and the helm. "'Tis the captain!"

But James was already gone, making his way across the battered deck, shivering in the unexpected cold of the wind and the rain. It was just as well, he thought idly, that he had forgotten his shirt – it as likely would have been ripped from his body as not, in these winds. He steadied himself along the railing as he wiped his soaking hair from his eyes, though that was a losing venture. Approaching the quarterdeck, he saw Brodie standing at the helm.

The captain had neglected to wear his burgundy greatcoat – perhaps not wanting to ruin it in the storm? James certainly hoped such vain considerations would not be futile, and that they would not all be at the bottom of the sea before the night was over. He heard the Scot bellowing commands as he maintained a steady hold on the wheel, and, ignoring all shipboard protocol, James bounded onto the quarterdeck to stand before the captain. He could see Kurtz as he passed by, and felt the fearsome boatswain's glare, but at the moment he cared not a whit.

"Captain Brodie!" James shouted urgently. "Captain, we have to turn the ship to starboard! It's the only way we'll survive the storm!"

Brodie suddenly appeared aware that someone had intruded onto his domain, and his eyes narrowed imperceptibly before he frowned at the substance of James's words, then shook his head.

"Are you mad, man? We're driving into the storm – we'll be out of it sooner if we keep on course! If we turn, we'll be riding the edges of it, taking the crosswinds, and we'll be sunk for certain!"

James shook his head, now firmly certain that he had gleaned the only way for the _Sagitta_ to survive. "I lost the _Dauntless_ driving into the headwind of a storm just like this one," he insisted. "And you'll lose the _Sagitta_ if you keep going on course. I beg you, captain – I've sailed through a hurricane, and this is the only way we're getting out of it!"

Brodie squinted at him through the blinding haze of rain, his face the familiar mask of inscrutability that James found maddening even when time was not of the essence. But he was in no mood to play games, not when all their lives were at stake.

"Captain, we have to turn now, dammit! Or else the _Sagitta_ is lost!"

Brodie clearly did not like being ordered about on his own ship, and James sensed Kurtz stirring, attentive to the feud going on behind him. James thought suddenly of Niamh – she must still be below decks, and utterly terrified. The thought of her dying, drowned in a storm because of her husband's stubbornness, tore at James's heart, and he set himself resolutely, unafraid of the wrath of either Brodie or his mighty boatswain.

"You can have me flogged all you like if we make it through, sir, but if you will not turn the ship to starboard, then I will."

Brodie's eyes flashed in anger, but the seriousness of James's bearing must have impressed itself upon him, because he nodded briskly.

"All crew, full starboard! Furl the sails for a starboard turn and take you care of the winds! Full starboard!"

The cry was echoed down the line, and James saw the men looking at each other confusedly even as they hastened to their new orders. Perhaps they were used to obeying the seemingly strange whims of Captain Brodie, but at any rate, they were all following the new orders, to a man.

"Now, Mr. Norrington," Brodie said in a clipped tone that brooked no refusal. "You will haul yourself up the mainmast and keep alert in the crow's nest for any changes in the wind. If you feel that we have made an error in changing course, you will come down and tell me immediately. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly, Captain."

"Good. I am trusting this ship to your discretion and experience, Mr. Norrington. If you are wrong, then God help us all." Brodie made it clear that the conversation was over, and James nodded, turning towards the mainmast and ignoring the glaring, hulking form of Kurtz as he traversed his way back up the deck.

Climbing the mainmast was damn near suicidal in this wind, but James kept himself low and close to the mast, feeling the wind shearing painfully over the exposed skin of his back as he ascended the ropes. The crow's nest was a perilous place to be in a storm – the wind would come at him savage and unopposed by the sails or the hull or any other material impediment. As he hauled himself into the small, fragile stand, he felt the wind tearing at his skin and hair, felt the rain lacing into his flesh, stinging his eyes, and all else around him, all activity below, was utterly drowned out by the screaming banshee wail of the wind.

It was just him and the storm now. The _Sagitta_ had disappeared beneath him, and he felt again in his heart the devastating loss of the _Dauntless_, the sinking despair he felt as he clung desperately to a piece of her shattered hull, bobbing helplessly in the sea, watching the rest of his proud ship go down to her watery grave. He felt a wild madness seize him, and, as the storm laid siege to his body, doing its best to break him against its might, he threw out his arms, staggering back into the side of the crow's nest with the force of the wind.

"Have you come to take me at last?" he roared, his words stripped from his mouth by the howling winds, leaving him breathless. But he would not be so easily cowed, not this time.

"Go on, then! Have at me! Take me if you mean to, you son of a bitch!" He was almost gleeful in his mania. "Break me across the waves and throw me into the sea, if you can, you godforsaken bastard!"

And so he swore and cursed at the storm, his rage matching its own, a wild man, as raw and elemental as the storm that battered him. But as they sailed, the ship turning slowly and ponderously to starboard, rocked and buffeted by the unforgiving winds, they gradually noticed the fury of the storm abating. The men began to cheer, but James heard none of it, nor would he have joined in if he had. He knew that hurricanes had a deceptive patch of calm at the centre, just enough to fool a novice sailor that he had weathered the storm and all was well. But all was not entirely well, not yet, and so he bellowed down the mast that the men should keep to it and brace for more winds to come; and sure enough, after some time, the winds picked up again, the waves tossed the ship about like a toy in a child's bathtub, and the keening wind blotted all other sound, all other sensation, from James's world, and he was left alone again with his mortal enemy.

But now he was triumphant, grinning, his madman's cursing taking a victorious tone, because he knew he had won. The storm raged, but it raged with less intensity; it battered the ship, but not as roughly as before; it blew rain across the deck and across the bodies of the soaked, bedraggled men, but it did not sting as much now. As the _Sagitta_ sailed and the winds gusted down and the rain slowed to a manageable pace, James began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. He was dizzy, giddy, drunk with glee. The _Sagitta_ was going to survive. The men were going to survive. And he, James, had been right. He felt light, as though floating on the air.

But then he thought again about the men of the _Dauntless_, and his glee fled at once. It was a victory, but a dearly bought one; the experience that had enabled him to save the _Sagitta_ had been purchased at the lives of the crew of the _Dauntless_. He closed his eyes, this time unafraid to let the tears come, unseen up in the crow's nest, and he held his lost boys in his heart again, one more time.

"I am sorry I failed you," he said softly into the dying wind. "I will make certain your sacrifice was worth the cost. Now and for the rest of my life. I swear it."

He opened his eyes, and was startled to see a seabird straight across from him, resting on the rim of the crow's nest, regarding him with a jauntily-cocked head. It stayed there like that, mere inches from him, for several moments; then, with a keening cry, it lifted off, winging into the wind, another survivor of the storm. The bird disappeared into the grey horizon, taking with it James's solemn vow. A great peace settled over him, and he raised his hand to gently brush away the tears before descending the mast carefully down to the deck.

"There's the man of the hour!" Riggins was there at once, clapping James across the back like a schoolmaster taking delight in a stellar young pupil. "You were right about the storm, mate, and you done saved all our hides. We can't never thank you enough, Mr. Norrington." James saw Wells, and Crosby, and Simple Pete, all grinning at him like the happy, lucky fools they were (Pete grinning wider than the rest of them combined).

"Aye, lad. I can't say I'm fond of being ordered about on my own ship, but we'd have been done for sure without you." Brodie emerged from the crowd, clad again in his resplendent greatcoat. "Though I seem to recall you offering to be flogged if we made it through."

The crew's smiles faltered, unsure whether Brodie could truly mean to punish the man who'd just saved them all from shipwreck, and even James stilled himself against the chance that Brodie was not jesting. But, of course, he was, and the Scot laughed a great, loud laugh, and joined Riggins in clapping James on the back.

"But I think that's one suggestion of yours I'll forego, what do you say, Mr. Norrington?" James grinned, feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the camaraderie surrounding him, and, truthfully, feeling very tired now that all the excitement had passed. He desperately wanted to go below to his hammock and sleep the rest of the day away. But Brodie still had a hand clasped on his shoulder, and, before pulling away, the captain leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper: "I told you you'd find your fresh start aboard the _Sagitta_. She has a way of bringing out the best in people."

James nodded, for once agreeing with Brodie without reservation. "Aye, that she does."

* * *

James adjusted the mirror, propped against a bowl on one of the tables in the crew's mess, and dipped the razor into the dish of water. He'd secured some soap from the ship's stores and had lathered up his face, for the first time in weeks. He always shaved whenever his beard threatened to grow too long, but he'd never cared when it grew back. In time, he'd come to realize that he was hiding behind it; it was another means to differentiate him, the Tortuga drunkard who caroused and whored and cared little for anything in the world, from the man he'd once been, the well-kept ship-shape officer who'd shaved dutifully every morning and maintained his uniform with the utmost care.

But now, it was time for the beard to go, and this time for good. He was done hiding behind it – was done hiding behind all of it. Which was not to say that he'd ever be that other man again – he couldn't, even if he'd wanted to, which he didn't. He didn't imagine he'd give up drinking rum, or enjoying the pleasure of women. But James Norrington – Commodore James Norrington – was no longer dead to him. Commodore Norrington had lost his ship and failed his men. But he had also avenged them upon the storm that had taken their lives, had ensured that their sacrifice hadn't been in vain. And so James decided that it was time to stop hiding from his past.

He drew the razor straight across the line of his jaw, watching the bits of fur falling into the water dish below. He scraped delicately and with a sure hand (he'd made sure to attend to this task before drinking any rum for the day) until the beard was gone, its remnants lying scattered across the table and in the water dish. Scraping the stray hair into the dish, James viewed his reflection with the curious regard of a stranger. He rubbed at his jaw, his freshly-shaven cheeks feeling strange and foreign to his hands after months of bearded stubble. He had no illusions that anything else about his life would change, but it was a small gesture, and one he felt entitled to make after feeling the overwhelming sense of – whatever it was he'd felt in the crow's nest, when that curious seabird had alighted next to him.

Absolution – that was it. He felt, at last, absolved of his guilt for what had happened to the _Dauntless_, and in so doing, he'd given himself permission to carry on with his life. He grinned, his smile looking strange to him without any whiskers surrounding it. Well, losing the beard was a start. He wrinkled his nose, realizing he would have to do something about his ragged clothes, which had certainly seen better days, and of course he needed a bath desperately – but that would have to be had whenever they made port in Saint-Domingue in a few days' time.

Meanwhile, James snapped his razor back into place and stood, stretching mightily, feeling free and buoyant. Feeling lucky. Perhaps Wells would be interested in a game of cards. James rather enjoyed the thought of celebrating his newfound life by drinking a well-earned bottle of rum or three.

* * *

**A/N: My apologies for the long wait between chapters! Life got a bit hectic there for a while. Unfortunately, like the _Sagitta_ in the middle of the hurricane, it's going to get worse before it gets better, as I will be moving in a week, returning to university another couple of weeks after that, and will be taking care of a lot of things in the meantime. So I hope to get the next chapter out sometime in the next few weeks, but if you don't hear from me, know that I'm just a bit busy and will get to it as soon as I can! **

**My tremendous thanks to Beta Gyre, who volunteered her expert knowledge on the movement and patterns of hurricanes so that I could make this chapter as realistic as possible and give James a good idea for a way to save the ship. Any meteorological errors that remain are wholly mine.**

**Finally, I know that some of you (many of you? most of you?) are James/Elizabeth fans, and while I can tease you with the knowledge that you haven't seen the last of her in this story, I can also provide you with a more immediate fix for your J/E cravings, as I was inspired to write a couple of short and fluffy one-shots. Please check them out if you are interested! Both may be found under my author's page (since ff won't let me post direct links):  
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**Just a**** Dream: My response to AWE.  
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**An Awakening:**** James invites Elizabeth on a picnic, and things don't go as planned.  
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**Hope you enjoy! As always, reviews are greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading, everyone :)**


	9. The Old Pretender

_God damn it all_, James thought with no small measure of irritation, _how I loathe the bloody French._

He'd only been to Paris once and had found it vile, the smell of sewage rank in the streets, doxies and whores brazenly cooing at him on every street corner. Port-au-Prince smelled a bit better, no doubt due to the cleansing effects of the sea breeze, but the whores here were, if anything, even more slatternly than their Parisian counterparts. Not, James was forced to admit, that that was _entirely_ a bad thing – a few nights in the company of loose women would not be so bad at all after the enforced celibacy of shipboard life. He'd enjoyed his first night in port quite thoroughly – the bath had been hot and invigorating, and the pretty little strumpet who'd shared it with him had been just what he'd needed to take his mind off of other things. He'd left her a silver coin – the French liked silver, didn't they? Even if it _was_ of English mint – and departed early, while she still slumbered naked and warm beneath the tousled sheets.

Cheerful whores aside, James found little to recommend the French, a notion which was thoroughly reinforced as he stood impatiently in the clothier's parlour, hoping to replace his shabby clothes. He surveyed the too-tight breeches and frilly shirts, the elaborately embroidered waistcoats and the gleaming buckled shoes, until at last the shop's proprietor, an airy wisp of a man with a powdered blue bouffant wig, glided out to greet him. The man's nose wrinkled at once upon sighting James's rather worse-for-wear outfit. The shopkeeper greeted him, and James fortunately spoke sufficient French to understand the polite yet lukewarm salutation.

"Yes," James replied in French, aware of how atrocious his accent must sound to the merchant's ears. "I… I would like new clothes." He hoped he'd gotten that right, and hadn't inadvertently asked for something altogether different or scandalous.

James hadn't thought that it was possible for the man's nose to wrinkle even _more_, but apparently he'd been wrong. He was beginning to wonder what obscenity he'd inadvertently blurted out when the man replied, in brusque, heavily accented English: "Ah, no wonder you are so _gauche_! You are English!" James opened his mouth to retort, but the man brushed his words away as if waving off a fly. "No need to explain, _monsieur_, we will have you dressed as a gentleman as quick as you please! I have in my stock only the very latest trends from Paris, all of the highest quality! We will have you looking no more like a gutter tramp in no time at all!"

James felt his face burning. _Gutter tramp_? His clothes might be scruffy, and a bit tattered, but they weren't _that_ bad. Not after he'd washed them out in the washbasin last night, at any rate.

"Well, sir, you see, I am a sailor," he began slowly, trying his best to be diplomatic. "I was merely hoping for something a little less… ostentatious?"

"Ostentatious? _Ostentatious_? You dare insult my wares?" So much for diplomacy; the little man was abuzz with indignation, his cheeks flushing bright. "Then I have nothing to help you, _monsieur_! If you wish to go about looking as a filthy English swine then be my guest!" He made a great show of turning around in a huff, petulantly refusing to acknowledge James's continued presence.

"Swine?" James gathered himself upright angrily and pulled his threadbare clothes proudly about himself. "Well at least I won't be strutting about like a great prancing popinjay in these ludicrous poncey rags!" He banged the door open with a flourish and, with an angry swipe of his hand, knocked a bewigged mannequin to the floor as he strode righteously from the parlour. The last thing he heard before the door slammed shut was the shopkeeper's indignant screech, and he grinned wickedly to himself. Thank God his own days of wearing that insufferable wig were over.

Having thus been forcefully reminded of his distaste for most things French, James rather hoped Captain Brodie would be able to finish his business in Saint-Domingue quickly so they could cast off for a friendlier port. Brodie had been enigmatic about the nature of said business, demurring when asked any questions and alluding only to "meetings" he needed to conduct with his "business associates." James highly suspected that Brodie was engaged in smuggling of some sort – rum-running, perhaps, or wine-smuggling. He'd seen no obvious evidence of contraband in the ship's hold, but then again, most of the cargo had already been crated up for delivery to its port of final destination, and James had no real way of knowing what was inside. Nor, he was forced to admit, did he care overly much; when he'd been in the Navy, apprehending rum-runners had been one of his crucial duties, but now that a smuggler (or suspected smuggler, he amended; he had no evidence that Brodie's business was illicit, after all) was paying his wages, he found himself less concerned with the intricacies of duty tariffs and taxation.

_Is this how pirates begin their journey to lawlessness, then? First making excuses for smuggling, then robbery, then kidnapping and murder? All justified in the name of earning coin?_ James shook his head, dismissing the thoughts. There was quite a gulf between smuggling rum and attacking a defenceless merchant vessel to kidnap its crew and plunder its goods. And it wasn't as though he hadn't done unsavoury things to survive already. Even so, the memory of the _Dauntless_ crew flitted through his mind once more, accompanied by the nagging sensation that he had been granted a second chance – a second chance that was surely not meant to be wasted on living a life of petty seafaring crime.

_Stop it. You can't do anything to honour their memory without coin, you great idiot._ James had noticed that, ever since the hurricane, the old nagging voice in his head – the voice he'd attributed to the Commodore – had begun recurring with increasing frequency. It puzzled him even as it vexed him, but he was determined to waste no more time entertaining it. He had a job to do, and as he hired the horse and cart from the grubby little man in the market square, he pushed all thoughts of law, and duty, and honour, from his mind – his only responsibility, for the time being, was to himself and to the _Sagitta_. As the cart tumbled across the busy main street and onto the rickety planks of the docks, James motioned for the driver to pull to a stop.

"Here. This is my ship. I'll be just a moment loading the goods," he told the driver as he hopped off the cart and ambled up the dock to the _Sagitta_'s gangway. Wells, Crosby, and Simple Pete lolled against a set of crates assembled on the deck.

"You lot, stop being such useless layabouts and help me load up these crates!" James called out to them. Wells responded with an obscene gesture and the men began to haul the crates down the gangway and onto the cart.

"These sure is heavy! I wonder what's inside!" Simple Pete huffed as he heaved a crate into the back of the wagon.

"Who bloody knows? The cap'n never tells us his affairs, and I know better'n to ask! He pays well, 's all I know! The rest of it ain't none of my business!" Wells responded.

"You're a wise man, Sam," James replied as Crosby loaded the last crate onto the wagon. "Now you lads go enjoy yourselves while I deliver these to the captain's business partner. Perhaps I'll join you for a drink later." The men wasted no time heeding James's advice, heading straight for a dilapidated tavern just on the outer edge of the docks, which looked to be the first stop in port for many a sailor disembarking at Port-au-Prince. James watched them depart without envy – there would be time, and coin, for drink later, once he completed this job.

Captain Brodie, just before they'd made port, had pulled James aside and asked him to deliver a few crates of goods to a trusted friend and business partner, one Monsieur Devereaux, who lived in a lovely mansion in the wealthier district of Port-au-Prince. Brodie would have enjoyed the opportunity to call upon his old friend himself, but regrettably, he would be far too occupied with other business to have time to visit Devereaux. But in light of his close friendship with the Frenchman, he would not entrust delivery of the goods to just anyone, and (Brodie had then pulled James a bit closer, and gave him a conspiratorial wink) James had thoroughly proven his trustworthiness with his actions during the hurricane. Besides, Brodie had assured him that a larger share of the crew's gold awaited him if he was willing to perform this favour. James had readily agreed; it was a simple enough errand, and certainly worthy any amount of coin Brodie wished to pay him. Even if the crates – stamped, rather improbably, as "dry goods" – did contain illicit contraband, or the payment for same.

And so, as the cart pulled up before a resplendent mansion, James decided that this might just be the easiest gold he'd ever earned. All he had to do was sign the crates over to Monsieur Devereaux, obtain the bill of sale, and be on his way – and then the day was his to do with as he wished. Climbing down from the cart, he instructed the driver to wait while he approached the large and intricately-carved wooden doors of the mansion. He lifted the elaborate bronze knocker and banged it home, and, in a matter of moments, the door opened to reveal a wary serving maid, who regarded James and his shabby coat with more than a little trepidation.

"Ah, good day," James said in French, managing a smile. "I have a delivery for a Monsieur Devereaux. I'm told he lives here?"

"Monsieur… Devereaux?" the maid stammered. "You must mean the captain?"

"Captain?" James furrowed his brows, rereading the bill of sale. _For M. Devereaux – 7 crates as promised. AB. _No mention of any rank. "Well, I must admit, I am not acquainted with Monsieur – with the captain myself. I – "

"It's all right, Lisette, I will handle our visitor." A husky feminine voice interrupted his ramblings, and James looked up at once from the bill of sale to find a voluptuous and exceedingly well-dressed woman of aristocratic bearing (and exceptional beauty) regarding him bemusedly.

"But madame, this man does not know – "

"Go _on_, Lisette! I said shoo!" With a casual flick of her wrist, she dismissed the nervous maid, and turned to James with a coquettish grin.

"Good afternoon, sir," she purred, in English. James returned her smile with his own. Now he certainly felt on more familiar ground.

"Good afternoon, madame," he said smoothly. "I hate to trouble you, but I must arrange a delivery for Monsieur Devereaux."

"Ah yes, my _dear _husband." Her suddenly acerbic tone implied that she was less than pleased with that particular circumstance. "Yes, well, he is out God knows where, probably with ze whores again. How I suffer so!" The woman – Madame Devereaux – was clearly accustomed to playing the long-suffering wife, and she threw her arm theatrically against her face in despair. James stared at her in utter bewilderment. He was used to direct, bawdy talk from whores, of course, but from wealthy, respectable women?

"Yes, well, Madame Devereaux, I am sorry to hear of your marital troubles, but I really must arrange for this delivery to his estate. If you could perhaps summon for his steward – "

"_Zut alors_! I am being so rude!" she exclaimed suddenly. She leaned back into the door and screeched at an unseen servant, bellowing at him to attend to the delivery at once and to secure it in the wine cellar (thus bolstering James's suspicions that Brodie was, in fact, trafficking in smuggled contraband).

"Ah yes, my husband's steward is a lazy swine, but he is good enough, no?" She had returned her attention to James and was eyeing him with an interest that was certainly less than platonic. "I shall have him sign your bill and you may be on your way, but, oh, look at you, you poor thing!" She reached out and ran a hand, lightly, down James's arm. Despite himself – despite the complete and utter absurdity of the situation – James felt a twinge of desire thrumming through his blood at her touch. "You must be so tired from ze journey! I must insist you come inside and have some tea!"

James could think of a thousand good reasons to refuse, to beggar off and claim that he was busy, that he could not stay, that he had other errands to run; and only one reason (and a very poor one at that) to accept her invitation.

"Tea sounds positively delightful, Madame Devereaux," he said.

"Please," she said, her voice husky and her countenance now decidedly non-platonic, "you must call me Marie."

Madame Devereaux – Marie – escorted him into what appeared to be a sitting room. It was small and cozy, and sported a plush and very comfortable-looking chaise lounge, as well as couple of chairs and a small table. A tall and sturdy armoire sat in one corner opposite a small pianoforte. A servant swept into the room and set a pot of tea and two saucers carefully onto the small table before bowing deeply and exiting the room as silently as he'd entered. James sat, and as Madame Devereaux took the other chair, he took the opportunity to truly study her. She _was_ beautiful – her auburn hair was pinned into an elaborate mess of curls atop her head, leaving only stray tendrils to float about her face, and her lips were plump and juicy and – was it James's imagination, or had she just flitted her tongue between them?

"I must thank you once again for your hospitality, Madame – "

"Marie, you must call me Marie!" she exclaimed. "All day long it is 'Madame this' and 'Madame that.' I tire of it." She took the pot of tea, poured a cup for herself and James, and settled back into the chair to regard him. "But tell me about yourself, yes? I must know your name! You are English, no? I have always enjoyed ze English, though perhaps merely to spite my husband!" She tittered wildly in delight, her eyes never leaving his.

James eyed her warily, feeling increasingly like a fly being enticed ever so surely to the spider's web. But, he had to admit, she was _very_ tempting spider.

"My name is James," he said, sipping at his tea. "I am afraid I'm not a very remarkable man. I am merely a sailor on a merchant vessel. My captain is an acquaintance of your husband's, and wished to arrange a personal delivery of his goods. But Captain Brodie was unable to call upon you himself, and so sent me in his stead."

Marie's countenance soured visibly at the mention of her husband. "How typical of Jean-Paul to be absent even when expecting a friend. He is always 'busy,' is my husband. Busy with his mistress I suspect!" She sighed dramatically and set her tea cup down with an emphatic clink. "What I fool I was to have married him!"

"Your husband is the fool to keep a mistress when he has such a beautiful wife awaiting him at home," James said smoothly, setting his tea down beside hers. "I daresay if I were married to a woman of such exquisite beauty, I would see no reason to satisfy my needs elsewhere."

In all his years of debauchery on Tortuga, James had bedded many a whore, but (to his knowledge) he had never seduced another man's wife. He had certainly been tempted, most lately by Niamh; but something – perhaps a tattered remnant of his old code of honour – had kept him from crossing that particular line. And knowing that Madame Devereaux was the wife of Brodie's associate – by all appearances, a very wealthy and powerful associate at that – should have been enough to warn him off course.

But perhaps it was the barely-concealed leer of desire with which she regarded him, together with his longing to see if the tavern tales he'd heard of bawdy and promiscuous French wives were true; or perhaps it was even a twinge of pity for a woman who, whatever her moral predilections, had been ill-used by a faithless husband.

"I have always enjoyed ze seamen, you know," she purred, placing her hand atop his and running her thumb sensuously across his fingers. "It is why I married my scoundrel of a husband. But ze French men, they have no time for their wives. And so if he can have his whores, why should I not have ze other sailors, no?" Her hand moved to his leg, where it began to caress him in a tortuous journey towards his thigh. And yet, as pleasurable as all of this undoubtedly was…

"Why me?" he managed at last, his voice strangled with lust as her hand crept closer and closer to the evidence of his desire. "There are surely other sailors in Port-au-Prince – I have nothing to offer you – "

"Nothing?" she cooed as her wandering hand came to rest on the ill-concealed bulge in his breeches. "Oh, but that's not true, _mon cher_. I want ze big English cock." She squeezed him, for emphasis, and any lingering resistance he'd harboured crumbled at once.

James was uncertain whether he had risen from the chair first, or she, but he soon found himself pressed against her, his lips assaulting hers with a primal force as she tugged eagerly at his coat, shrugging it off his shoulders. He took her by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the chaise lounge, and as she lay there, wanton and vulgar and eager for him – for _him_, not because she was a whore who expected coin, but because she was a woman who desired _him_ – James found himself uncharacteristically filled with a buoyant excitement, as if he were a seventeen year old lad again carrying on with a pretty maid who'd batted eyes at him.

He fumbled hurriedly with the buttons of his breeches, eager to rid himself of the barrier that kept him from diving at once into her sweet heat. He groaned raggedly as he filled her, and soon discovered – from Madame Devereaux's full-throated scream of pleasure – that all the tales he'd heard about licentious French wives were true.

Indeed, Madame Devereaux might have been the most vocal woman to whom he'd ever made love. She shrieked and moaned and cried out with wild abandon, and he found the effect of her exhortations to be as a riding crop to a stallion, spurring him on to a feverish pace. He gripped her hips tightly in his hands as he bore down on her, her legs wrapped tight around his waist as she urged him on harder, faster, deeper. Her cries grew even louder and more boisterous until she threw her head back in an expression of primal, unadulterated bliss and screamed so loudly James was certain it must have been audible on the street outside. Her enthusiasm was too much for him to bear, and with a ragged gasp and a shudder, he released his seed inside her, collapsing against the chaise lounge in boneless euphoria, propped up only by his trembling arms. He panted breathlessly for air and felt beads of sweat dripping down his face and neck and under the collar of his shirt – it had been some time since he'd ravaged a woman this _thoroughly_, at least since Elizabeth –

But that particular line of thought was squelched with a sudden and vicious finality by the reverberation of wooden doors slamming open, followed by a heated exchange of words between one extraordinarily incensed man and a series of pleading, apologetically subservient interlocutors, which could only mean –

"Oh no!" Madame Devereaux gasped, still splayed wantonly beneath James on the lounge. "My husband is home! You must hide! Quickly! Quickly!" James pulled away from her at once, the pleasant afterglow of his release dissipating instantly. He hurriedly buttoned his breeches, his eyes casting anxiously about the room for somewhere to hide as the raging man grew nearer, the shouted French words becoming clearer and more discernible to his ears:

"Please, Captain, you must not intrude – the Madame is not feeling so well – "

"She feels well enough to take another man between her filthy legs right in my own parlour! And you should think twice about who pays your wages! It is not my whore wife who merits your loyalty! You think about that, stupid little bitch!"

"Please, sir, I meant no disrespect – "

"Shut up!" A loud slapping sound echoed from the corridor beyond, accompanied by a yelp of pain. James spied the armoire across the room, and he quickly made his way over and shut himself inside just in time for the parlour doors to crash open with an authoritative bang.

"Where is he?" The man was in the room now, and his rage was palpable even to James, who could only see dimly through the crack between the armoire's doors. He willed himself to stay utterly still, though Madame Devereaux's bountiful dresses pressed down on him from both sides, and the lacy, frilly fabric tickled maddeningly at the exposed skin of his neck.

"I don't know who you are talking about," Madame Devereaux replied coldly. "Or what right you have to ask of me such a question when the stink of the brothel clings to you like cod to a fishmonger!"

"Do not play games with me, you faithless harlot! Do you think I did not hear you? Do you think the entirety of Port-au-Prince did not hear you? You have the gall to whore yourself to other men in my own home and then you lie to me?" James saw the man – Captain Devereaux – raise his hand to strike at his wife, but she moved deftly behind the chaise lounge, careful to keep a piece of furniture between herself and her enraged husband. It was clear from her instinctive movements that it was an impulse developed from frequent practice. James felt a bubbling cauldron of rage beginning to simmer within his breast. He could understand the pain of being cuckolded – certainly _he_ of all men could – but men who raised their hands to women were, to his reckoning, the basest of all creatures, their depravity too contemptible for words. James itched to run his blade through the captain's throat, and he slid his hand carefully down his side before remembering, with a belated panic, that he'd left his blade locked away on the _Sagitta_, having not wanted to court trouble in a foreign colony. He almost laughed out loud at the irony. It seemed that, whether he courted it or not, trouble had a way of finding him with unerring regularity.

"And you have the gall to call your own wife a whore while you have been ploughing your way through all the strumpets on the island? Do not speak to me of whores!" James heard the distinctive sound of spitting, and a roar of fury as Captain Devereaux received a faceful of his wife's contempt.

"Who I bed is none of your business! You are my wife –"

"And who _I_ bed when you are with your sluts is none of _your_ business!" James heard a tinkling of shattered glass and guessed that one of the teacups had just meet its doom, though who threw it at whom he could not clearly see through the small slit in the door. "But since you are so curious I shall tell you! He is a sailor – a dashing sailor, how you used to be before you earned your command and put on such airs!"

Captain Devereaux swore viciously, a creative string of French obscenities that James could not precisely translate. "You fucked a common dock rat? A filthy sea man? He probably gave you the pox, filthy whore! I hope he did, for I shall certainly never share your bed again! Slattern!"

James stiffened in mute outrage. He most certainly did _not_ have the pox! He may have bedded his share of wenches and whores, but a discerning man quickly learned which women to avoid on Tortuga. The pox! Of all the nerve!

"Ha! If any man has the pox it is you, with all your cheap and toothless doxies! But no, dear husband, he was not just a 'common dock rat' – he was a tall, handsome sailor!" James felt some of his outrage bleed away. This sort of talk he could abide. "And – oh yes, the best part – he was an Englishman! And quite a well-endowed Englishman as well! He certainly puts _you_ to shame!" James grinned. Yes, this was very much the sort of talk he could abide.

Madame Devereaux continued ruthlessly. "But I suppose that is why you love your whores so? They care more for the size of your coinpurse than your – ?"

"Enough!" Captain Devereaux bellowed. "You think to have your revenge on me, to fuck a sailor? An English sailor?" James heard the telltale metallic screech of a sword being pulled quickly from a scabbard. "You seem to forget that killing Englishmen is a day's work for me. What is one more?" James saw, through the crack in the door, Captain Devereaux thrust his sword violently into the chaise lounge, sending a riot of feathers wafting into the air. Madame Devereaux screamed in terror as her husband began savagely slashing into the sitting chairs.

"If you will not tell me where your Englishman is, then you leave me no choice but to find him!" Madame Devereaux burst into broken sobs as her husband began hacking furiously at the pianoforte, the severed strings wailing in discordant agony as the instrument keened its death throes. James knew it was only a matter of time before Captain Devereaux made his way to the armoire and thrust the blade home and into his chest. His heart hammered fitfully and his fingers itched for his absent blade. To confront the sword-wielding madman unarmed was suicide, but to stay hidden was an equally certain death, and a coward's death at that. A steady resolve hardened in James's heart, and he pressed his palm against the armoire door, ready to burst out and meet his would-be assailant man to man, but at once, an idea – an utterly mad idea, but an idea nonetheless – occurred to him.

"So sorry about the piano," Captain Devereaux sneered. "Did you play it for your Englishman? Or was he only interested in rutting like a stag? An Englishman! Of all the filthy brutes – "

But whatever else Captain Devereaux had to say about Englishmen was lost as James burst suddenly from the armoire and hurled an armful of Madame Devereaux's dresses into the captain's face. James had locked eyes with the man for the briefest of moments; the captain was small in stature, with a long Gallic nose and haughty, furrowed brows, and as he spied James, his face twisted into an ugly mask of hatred and rage. But then he was buried beneath a mass of dresses, and as he twisted and flounced to free himself from the garments, James cast a remorseful look at the aggrieved Madame Devereaux, a great shame filling his heart for the part he'd played in her terrible circumstances.

"Marie – "

But Madame Devereaux would have none of his pity; she shook her head firmly at him and gestured wildly at the window behind him.

"Get out, you fool! Go now!"

Captain Devereaux's wrathful bellow was muted by the layers of fabric that swathed him like one of the clothier's mannequins, and, at last freeing one arm, he began to hack at the remaining garments with his sword. Reminding himself that he was unarmed and needed to escape before the captain disentangled himself from the dresses, James turned to the window at the rear of the parlour, threw it open, and leapt out onto the street below.

The parlour was on the first floor of the manor, and so James landed hard, but on his feet. He was off at once, tearing through the streets like a madman, determined to put as much distance between himself and Captain Devereaux as he could. James ran pell-mell, heedless of the startled cries of the confused pedestrians who cursed him as he bumped through them in search of the crowded anonymity of the market district.

At last he emerged into the market square, chancing a fleeting look over his shoulder for any sign of pursuit. Four men, all wearing the livery James had noticed among the servants in the Devereaux manor, were trailing behind him, as yet unaware of his exact location – but that would not remain the case for long, unless he got himself out of the square and out of sight. Threading his way through the vendors and merchants, James crossed the square to enter a narrow alley on the opposite side of the market. Taking corners at a whim, he made his way through the labyrinthine warren of passages until he spied a cart filled with rum barrels nestled against the side of a ramshackle inn. At least he seemed to have left the affluent quarter of town behind – though if Captain Devereaux was as familiar with seedy brothels and taverns as his wife had intimated, then the shabby inn likely offered no refuge. He could afford to take no chances; he had no wish to meet his end at the point of a cuckolded husband's blade. Clambering atop the cart, James squeezed himself between the rum barrels and knelt down, confident he was disguised from view.

The delectable scent of the rum wafted across to him through the barrels, and James itched for a bottle, especially in light of his most recent ordeal. He decided that he would remain hidden for another half hour before making his way back to the _Sagitta_. As much as he yearned to enter the tavern for a much-needed drink, he could not be too careful; Captain Devereaux's men were almost certainly still out searching for him. And so, with a silent curse of frustration, James bade himself remain still.

He was not alone for long. James stiffened in alarm as the door to the inn pounded open and a series of voices, raised in agitated conversation, emerged behind him, filtered clearly through the open window of the tavern. Lowering himself slowly so that he was not visible above the side of the cart, James remained still as death, the frenetic pounding of his heart banging a tattoo against his ribcage.

"You told me you'd have the totem, you bloody French sons of whores!"

The words were English, and delivered in a very distinctive Scottish brogue. _What in the bloody hell was Brodie doing here_?

"We do 'have it!' In a manner of speaking. That is to say, we know where you can get it." The second voice also spoke in English, though with a strong French accent. "You are very demanding for one who has far more riding on this little rebellion than we." James frowned. 'Little rebellion?' What was Brodie embroiled in with these Frenchmen?

"I've got nothing riding on this other than the totem _you_ promised me, Frenchie."

"So now you are saying the restoration of your 'rightful king'" – here the Frenchman's voice dripped with palpable disdain – "is of no importance to you?"

James could hear Brodie snort, an exhalation of equal parts irritation and impatience. "Of course it's of importance to me, you fool! But in case you Frogs hadn't noticed, Scotland's sovereignty was bartered off in a devil's bargain to the English nearly twenty years ago. My presence here right now is an act of treason, and I'll be damned if I hang at the English gallows for glory alone. You promised the Totem of Ikenna and I want it. Now."

"You'll have your totem as well as our support to restore James Stuart to the throne, and in so doing free Scotland from England's yoke," the Frenchman snapped. "But do not forget that you have guaranteed us no shortage of support among your Jacobite allies across the West Indies and the Americas. We need them to converge at once if the rebellion is to have any guarantee of success, which means we must have all the pieces in place before any plans can be conceived. I assume you remember the debacle of '15?"

"You know good and bloody well I 'remember' it, and I'll thank you not to taunt me!" Brodie exploded angrily. "The bloody English hanged my father for treason. Treason! There can be no treason when a man fights for his king and country!"

"We agree," the Frenchman said smoothly. "Which is why we trust you'll uphold your end of the deal to secure your allies in the New World and prepare them to move against the German usurper."

"Of course I will, you know I will. There is just the matter – "

"Yes, we know, the totem. We attempted to secure it for you, but before we could obtain possession of the artefact, we learned that it had been purchased by a Dutch trader by the name of Geers Voort from a curiosity shop here in Port-au-Prince. Voort is a well-known and reputable merchant who transacts his business among all the colonies of the West Indies. Our spies have informed us that his next port of call is Bridgetown, where he intends to trade Dutch indigo from Aruba. And as you see, we have not been idle." A clinking sound, as of a bag of coins being lifted, echoed through the window. "Our agent has… shall we say… _instructed_ him to hold the totem for you. You will pay him with this." Certainly a bag of coins, then, which clinked again, no doubt now being transferred from the Frenchman to Brodie.

"So what you're saying is that you've done nothing," Brodie snarled derisively. "You can 'instruct' this Voort to hold onto the totem for me, but you can't relieve him of it yourself and save me the trouble? You're more useless than the half-wit swabbie serving aboard my ship!"

"You will see how 'useless' we are when it comes time to restore your pretender to the throne. Perhaps you should take care to speak more judiciously to your allies." The Frenchman's tone was low and dangerous.

"Then see to it you're as good as your word," Brodie shot back, uncowed.

"Of course," the Frenchman scoffed. "And you see to it that you are prepared to move when we tell you it is time."

"I'd be ready now if you'd given me the damned totem as we'd agreed!" Brodie snarled in agitation. "As it is, now I'll have to sail to Bridgetown and remove it from this Dutch fool's possession. Then I must store it safe away with the rest of my most valued prizes – I certainly don't keep my wealth aboard my ship where any damn fool pirate could seize it if he had a mind to! Once that's settled, I'll make for Charles Town. I've many acquaintances there who are sympathetic to the cause. But you bear in mind that I go to Charles Town only after I have the totem in hand!"

"Yes, your lust for this silly little Negro trinket is quite tedious," the Frenchman retorted. "But do not worry yourself. You shall find that the totem is exactly where and with whom we have said it is. So go quickly and collect your plaything so that we may get onto the real business at hand. I might remind you that France has as much to gain as Scotland from striking at the English crown."

"No one has as much to gain from restoring James Stuart to his rightful place as we Scots do!" Brodie's tone was cold, all sharp and biting steel. "But your assistance is welcomed, provided it is dependable. I do not wish to follow my father to the gallows in the wake of another ill-fated rebellion."

"The fate of this rebellion, whether well or ill, lies entirely with us," the Frenchman said. "Send word when you make sail for Charles Town. One of our agents will meet you there. And then we shall set everything in motion."

"Excellent!" Brodie's voice was at once cheerful and bright, and James wondered if the Frenchman found the Scot's mercurial nature maddening as well. "Then it's settled. I shall send word as soon as I am en route to Charles Town, and soon we shall see Scotland's glory unfurled again! God's grace will shine on our endeavour, gentlemen!"

"Indeed it shall, Captain, indeed it shall." A rustling of movement issued from the room behind James; the scraping of chairs being pushed back and footsteps plodding heavily towards the door. The door to the tavern creaked open and James heard the footfall of men crunching noisily on the dirt and rocks outside. A shadow passed over the cart, and James dared not move, not even to breathe, as the familiar long, thin silhouette of Captain Brodie, bedecked per usual in his resplendent coat, passed by not an arm's breadth in front of him.

James remained there, crouched down and hidden behind the rum barrels, for what felt like hours. The earlier fiasco with the cuckolded Captain Devereaux was utterly forgotten. He'd suspected that Brodie had come to Saint-Domingue, despite the dangers of anchoring a British-flagged ship in a French port, to smuggle lucrative contraband. He'd been wrong. Brodie wasn't a rum-runner. He was a traitor.

* * *

**A/N: Oh my goodness, I am so sorry for the delay in this chapter. Life Happened with a vengeance over the past couple of months - I left one city, went home for a couple of weeks, returned to a different city for uni, and have had to deal with an endless array of bureaucracy in the meantime for everything from university stuff to job applications. So it's a great relief to finally have this chapter done, and while I can state with a fair degree of confidence that it won't take another seven weeks to write the next one, I will have a full slate of classes and a lot of coursework, so while I will do my best to work on this story whenever time permits, please bear with me if it takes a few weeks! **

**And now to put on my history professor's hat: Those of you familiar with British history will no doubt recognize the events to which Brodie and his French conspirator are referring in this chapter. In the late 17th century, the King of England was James Stuart - aka James II - who was the Catholic son of the executed King Charles I and who had become king upon the death of his brother, Charles II, who had died with no legitimate heirs. The Protestant majority of England feared that James II would defy Parliament and recreate in England an absolutist Catholic monarchy like that of King Louis XIV in France. In 1688, James's Protestant daughter, Mary, who had married William of Orange, a Dutch prince, arrived in England at the head of an invasion fleet at the request of Parliament to depose her father James II. This was known as the Glorious Revolution and ensured the continuity of Protestant monarchs in England, but there were many - especially in Scotland and Ireland - who saw the deposition of James II, who fled into exile in France, as an unlawful usurpation of the crown. **

**James II died in 1701, but his son, James Francis Stuart (the would be James III), who would have ascended to the throne in the absence of the Glorious Revolution, claimed the rights to the crown, becoming known in England as "the Old Pretender." However, he had many supporters, known as Jacobites (from the Latin form of James, Jacobus), to whom he was affectionately known as "the king across the water" (a reference to his exile in France). To complicate matters, the Treaty of Union between the Kingdoms of England and Scotland was signed in 1707, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain - but many Scots believed that England had forced them, because of its superior political, economic, and military power, into acceding to the treaty. The Jacobite rebellions were supported by many anti-Union Scots who believed that restoring James Stuart to the throne would lead also to a restoration of Scottish sovereignty. A failed Jacobite rebellion occurred in 1715 when James Stuart launched a force into Scotland, but due to poor planning, the rebellion soon fizzled and its ringleaders were executed. The British crown had meanwhile passed to a Protestant cousin of the Stuarts, George I, and he would face no other serious threat to his power, though the Jacobite cause did not suffer its ultimate defeat until 1745 at the Battle of Culloden. **

**In this story, however, I imagine that perhaps the French, who had in reality been fickle in their support of the Stuart pretenders, were a bit more engaged in their desire to put a Catholic on England's throne, and of course, that Jacobites such as Brodie - who lacked only the means to decisively act - would be colluding with them. It's a bit of an alternate revision of the real history of the 1720s (this story, as you can tell from the clues I placed in this chapter, takes place around 1725), but hell, if there can be sea monsters in PotC, there can be alternative history, too!  
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**I hope I didn't bore you all to death with that bit of backstory! As always, reviews are greatly appreciated - it really means a lot to me to know that people are reading and (hopefully) enjoying this story, so please please, don't be shy and leave a review! All right, I think that's it - I promise next chapter won't have such a lengthy author's note!  
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